2007: A car bomb strikes near the revered Shiite Khillani mosque in Baghdad, killing at least 78 people and wounding more than 200, the same day about 10,000 US soldiers launch an offensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq north-east of Baghdad, killing at least 22 insurgents.

2008: Serbia's Supreme Court sentences Radomir Markovic, who was security chief for the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, to 40 years in prison for organising an attack on a prominent dissident in which four people died.

2009: The Vatican condemns as 'unjustified and inopportune” a claim by a church official that pressure from Jewish organisations is delaying the beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who critics say did not do enough to stop the Holocaust.

2013: President Barack Obama cautions the US and Europe against “complacency” brought on by peace, pledging to cut America's deployed nuclear weapons by one-third if Cold War foe Russia does the same.

2013: Afghan President Hamid Karzai suspends talks with the US on a new security deal to protest the way his Government was left out of initial peace negotiations with the Taliban.