A NATO air strike killed four Afghan police and two civilians on Thursday, Afghan officials said.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led NATO force in Kabul told Agence France Presse that the military was checking the information.

North Korea must stop stoking tensions and instead re-engage with the international community, the European Union said Thursday after Pyongyang warned it is ready to launch a nuclear attack on the United States.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said she deplored Pyongyang's announcement it would reopen its mothballed Yongbyon reactor which supplied plutonium for its weapons program.

The U.S. State Department urged “all parties in the Syria conflict to respect the sovereignty of Lebanon” after Syrian warplanes pounded earlier on Wednesday a house on the outskirts of the eastern border town of Arsal.

“We’re frankly not in a position to confirm this ourselves at the moment. But if in fact it is confirmed by the Lebanese side, it would represent the latest and most egregious violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty … in the Syrian conflict,” said State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland.

North Korea's threats and recent actions represent a "real and clear danger" to the United States as well as its allies South Korea and Japan, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday.

"They have nuclear capacity now, they have missile delivery capacity now," Hagel said after giving a major strategy speech at the National Defense University, calling Pyongyang's "bellicose dangerous rhetoric" problematic.

Egyptian prosecutors on Wednesday questioned a stand-up comedian on blasphemy charges following a guest appearance on the show of popular satirist Bassem Youssef, himself the subject of an investigation.

Ali Kandil is accused of insulting Islam during a segment on Youssef's show Elbernameg in February, in which he poked fun at the discourse and style of some Muslim clerics -- bringing to television screens what is already widely said in Egyptian homes.

Nelson Mandela is "much better" and responding satisfactorily to treatment after a week in hospital suffering from pneumonia, the South African presidency said Wednesday.

The frail 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero is steadily improving and doctors are happy with his progress, President Jacob Zuma's office said in a statement.

Egypt's prosecution is probing complaints of "threatening public security" against popular satirist Bassem Youssef, who is already on bail facing charges of insulting the president and offending Islam.

Judicial sources and Youssef said the public prosecutor ordered the probe on Monday following a complaint by a lawyer. The state security prosecution, which handles national security cases, will conduct the investigation.

The United States has placed a destroyer off the South Korean coast to defend against a possible missile strike, the latest in a series of publicized U.S. deployments to counter North Korean threats.

The USS Fitzgerald was moved to the southwestern coast after taking part in annual military exercises, instead of returning to its home port in Japan, a U.S. defense official told Agence France Presse Monday on condition of anonymity.

Gunmen in Pakistan on Monday set ablaze five trucks carrying NATO equipment out of Afghanistan as the international military alliance winds down its combat mission there, officials said.

Four masked gunmen on two motorbikes opened fire at the vehicles, forcing them to stop and then doused them in petrol to set them on fire in the southwestern province Baluchistan.

North Korea likely took meticulous steps to conceal any residue from its February nuclear weapon test, fueling suspicions that it is using a new bomb design with highly enriched uranium at its core, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials and weapons experts, the newspaper said the effects of the February 12 explosion were remarkably well contained, with few radioactive traces escaping into the atmosphere.