The former Kate Middleton is spending her first Valentine's Day as a married woman nearly 13,000km away from her husband.

Britain's security minister is holding talks in Jordan seeking to overcome a European ban on deporting a radical Islamist cleric from the UK to the kingdom.

Syrian government forces have renewed their assault on the rebellious city of Homs in what activists described as the heaviest shelling in days.

The UN human rights chief has decried Syria's escalating crackdown on civilian protesters.

Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric whom British officials say is an al-Qaida figurehead and a threat to national security, has been freed from an English prison into virtual house arrest.

Assailants targeted Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia in near-simultaneous strikes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed on archenemy Iran.

Syrian rebels have repelled a push by government tanks into a central town held by forces fighting President Bashar Assad's regime in an 11-month conflict that looks increasingly like a civil war.

Japanese men are learning to express their love with their lungs.

Under the Hague Convention Simon has fought through the courts for his daughter to be returned home.

Greeks have reacted angrily to their politicians passing an austerity package to help save their country from bankruptcy.

Authorities in Italy say pumping operations have begun to remove some of the 500,000 gallons of fuel aboard the cruise ship that ran aground off Tuscany.

Rescuers have pulled a 5-year-old girl alive from the rubble of a house flattened by a massive avalanche that killed both of her parents and at least seven of her relatives in a remote mountain village in southern Kosovo.

Al-Qaida's leader has called for the ouster of Syria's "pernicious, cancerous regime," raising fears that Islamic extremists will try to exploit an uprising against President Bashar Assad that began with peaceful calls for democratic change but is morphing into a bloody, armed insurgency.

Rioting has spread across central Athens and at least seven buildings have gone up in flames amid mass protests, as lawmakers debated harsh cutbacks demanded to keep the country solvent and within the eurozone.

New video footage has been released showing confusion on the bridge of the cruise ship Costa Concordia.

Security camera footage has shown a man storming into a pub in Northern England with a chainsaw.

Gunmen assassinated an army general in Damascus Saturday.

Two suicide car bombers struck security compounds in Aleppo on Friday, killing 28 people, Syrian officials say.

Here is a story for every teenager who has ever taken to Facebook to complain about their parents.

A 25-year-old parolee tried to abduct a seven-year-old girl from a Walmart store in Bremen, Georgia, on Wednesday, according to US state police.

A 22-year-old supermarket worker in England now has enough money to buy the whole chain if she wants to.

All New South Wales abattoirs are to be inspected after a secretly shot video revealed cruelty and abuse.

Stunning new images of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, have been released by the US space agency NASA after they were captured by a new time-lapse photographic technique.

A South African game park's effort to save a rhino from poachers ended up taking its life.

Italy's Mount Etna has been spewing forth lava with bursts lighting up the night sky.

A video which some say proves the existence of Iceland's answer to the Loch Ness Monster has sparked fierce debate in the country.

"Anything that moves, even a bird, is targeted. Life is completely cut off. It's a city of ghosts," said Abu Muhammad Ibrahim, an activist in Homs.

Itas Friday, which means it is time for a look back at the week that was across the Tasman.

Demonstrations for 'Free Tibet Awareness Day' have been held in Tibet, Nepal, India, Japan and Taiwan.

Until recently, Syriaas president Bashar Assad portrayed himself as the modern leader of a reforming state.

Pakistani police have cracked down on a man who was charging members of the public to see a 40-foot whale shark.

Syrian forces fired mortars and rockets that killed scores of people yesterday in the rebellious city of Homs, activists said.

Serbia is struggling to keep its power system going, officials have warned, after weeks of record low temperatures in Europe.

She squared off against Paul McCartney in divorce court, and now Heather Mills has taken on Piers Morgan at Britain's media ethics inquiry.

Britain's defence ministry says Prince Harry has qualified as an Apache attack helicopter pilot, graduating as the best co-pilot gunner in his class after 18 months of training.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge - formerly known as Kate Middleton - attended the royal preview of a retrospective of the work of artist Lucian Freud at Britain's National Portrait Gallery on Wednesday night.

Resurgent Rick Santorum said his sweep of three GOP contests earned his shoestring campaign US$250,000 overnight, cash he needs to take his upstart bid for the Republican presidential nomination to Mitt Romney's turf.

A Tokyo zoo staged an emergency drill on how to respond if rhinoceros were to escape from their enclosures.

Homs has become the focus of the worst violence of the 11-month-old uprising, which appears to be morphing into a civil war with fearsome sectarian overtones.

After a journey stretching over millions of kilometres, scientists at the Natural History Museum can at last get their hands on a little piece of Mars.

The European Union will impose harsher sanctions on Syria, according to a senior EU official, as Russia tried to broker talks between the vice president and the opposition to calm violence. Activists reported at least 50 killed in the regime's siege of the restive city of Homs.

The United States appears to be out of answers on what to do with Syria.

A 64-year-old Melbourne man has survived a paragliding accident which left him precariously perched in the top of a gum tree for six hours.

3 News can reveal New Zealand defence force personnel who travel to Fiji on holiday, are being told not to divulge who they work for.

A federal appeals court has declared California's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional, putting the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for a likely appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Russian scientists are reported to have reached a lake that has been hidden from the world for 14 million years.

Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez says they will formally complain to the UN Security Council that Britain has created a serious security risk by sending one of its most modern warships to the disputed Falkland Islands.

Onlookers have been marvelling at a bus-sized shark hauled ashore in Karachi, Pakistan.

Days after blocking a US-backed peace plan at the UN, senior Russian officials have pushed for reforms during an emergency meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Britain's attorney general says he understands why the government is angry about a court's decision to release an extremist cleric described as one of Europe's leading al-Qaida operatives on bail, but that authorities must follow the rule of law with everyone.

The editor of Britainas Daily Mail newspaper has traded insults with actor Hugh Grant at the Leveson inquiry into journalistic ethics.

Police in the English city of Birmingham have introduced a system that will predict when and where crime might happen.

Saint George in Queensland has escaped major flooding after its river peaked but didn't breach the town's temporary levee.

Syrian forces renewed their assault on the flashpoint city of Homs as Russia's foreign minister stressed the need for reform and dialogue.

Soldiers clashed with supporters of striking police in Brazil's third-largest city on Monday, firing tear gas and rubber bullets at the feet of people trying to join officers occupying the Bahia state legislature building.

In Britain, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations are underway a 60 years after she ascended the throne.

A makeshift levee is so far managing to hold back floodwaters in the town of St. George in Australia's Queensland state.

Thousands of people in Taiwan marked the Lantern Festival - the traditional end of the Lunar New Year holiday.

Overwhelmed by deep snow and harsh temperatures, some countries in Europe closed down schools and struggled to run public transport, as post-snow rains caused a dam to collapse in Bulgaria, flooding a village and killing at least four.

Tributes poured in to Queen Elizabeth II as she marked 60 years on the throne with a message vowing to continue serving the British people.