Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on Friday denied allegations that he smoked crack cocaine.

"Absolutely

A proposed international conference to try to stop Syria's civil war should be held as soon as possible, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday, but no date has yet been agreed for a meeting that appears to face growing obstacles.

Ban

Three blasts hit markets in Shi'ite districts in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 14 people, police and medical officials said.

Two car bombs exploded in busy markets in Sadr City, north-eastern Baghdad and killed at least 11 people and wounded another 18.

A suicide bomber in a car targeted two vehicles carrying foreign forces in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Thursday killing at least six Afghan civilians, Afghan officials said.

It

Iran is prepared to pursue nuclear diplomacy with world powers before or after next month's presidential election in the Islamic Republic, its chief negotiator said on Thursday.

Saeed

Fighters of the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in Syria executed 11 men they accused of taking part in massacres by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, a video published on Thursday showed.

A

Russia said on Tuesday it had caught an American red-handed as he tried to recruit a Russian intelligence officer to work for the CIA, a throwback to the Cold War era that risks upsetting efforts to improve relations.

The

Prime Minister David Cameron faced questions about his leadership on Tuesday after he buckled to pressure from within the Conservative Party to bring forward draft legislation enforcing a referendum on Britain's European Union membership.

Just

A blast that killed three people in Libya's second city Benghazi was caused by fishing explosives that detonated accidentally, not a car bomb as originally thought, a local government official said on Tuesday.

But

Kenyan police fired teargas and water cannon outside parliament on Tuesday to disperse about 200 people demonstrating against lawmakers' demands for a salary 130 times the legal minimum wage.

Civil

An Iranian man convicted of smuggling arms into Nigeria has been sentenced to five years in prison by a Lagos court.

Rockets,

Toppled in a 1999 military coup, jailed and exiled, Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif has made a triumphant election comeback and looks set to form a stable government capable of implementing reforms needed to rescue the fragile economy.

Sharif

Turkey accused a group with links to Syrian intelligence of carrying out car bombings that killed 46 people in a Turkish border town, and said on Sunday it was time for the world to act against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The

After the huge protests that followed the 2009 election, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have hoped June polls would quietly install a loyal conservative president, but the surprise candidacies of two major independents may scupper that.

Both

British Prime Minister David Cameron moved to end a revolt over European Union membership in his ruling Conservative party on Monday, saying all his ministers backed his strategy on the issue despite two expressing more skeptical views than his own.

Cameron,