Former Labour MP Chris Carter says he was lucky to escape possible death after a suicide car bomb exploded metres away from his Afghanistan home.

Shouting "murderer" and "executioner," hundreds of people jeered as the coffin of Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke arrived Tuesday for a funeral Mass celebrated by a splinter Catholic group opposed to the Vatican's outreach to Jews.

Claims among dubious Pakistanis that Malala Yusufzai is now Western puppet ignore her ongoing heroism.

The destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is well under way, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, has won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Former SS captain Erich Priebke participated in one of the worst massacres of German-occupied Italy. Now he's died - and no one wants to bury him.

Ex-soldiers could soon get support for psychological issues as well as physical injuries under wide-ranging changes to war pensions.

A look at how the past days' parallel tracks - pushing for approval of a military attack while pausing to give diplomacy a chance - unfolded.

In an intriguing tour, Pamela Wade gains insight into the horror inflicted on Europe during World War II.

America's threat of military action against Syria's regime receded into the distance yesterday as Washington and its allies decided to test a Russian proposal.

Syria says it's ready to state where its chemical weapons are and to halt their production, but the US says it'll have to do more than sign up to a treaty.

Syria says it has accepted Russia's proposal to place its chemical weapons under international control for subsequent dismantling.

Prime Minister John Key says a UN-backed suggestion to destroy all of Syria's chemical weapons as a way of diverting an increasingly violent situation is an "interesting proposal".

Facing the most perilous passage of his presidency, Barack Obama is to redouble his efforts to persuade the American public to back strikes against Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seemed calm and was surrounded by only light security when he talked to a French journalist this week.

The prospect of air strikes in Syria has grown with political developments driving towards military action.

The graves had run into each other, mounds of red earth washed by the rain, blown by the wind.

Thirty former guards at the Auschwitz death camp could face charges of being an accessory to murder.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully says the Opposition will be offered a formal briefing on Syria before any parliamentary motion is put by the Government.

'Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" - so the British Parliament decided that it didn't want to be shamed over Syrian intervention, writes Gwynne Dwyer.

Syria's civil war has driven almost a third of the country's population from their homes, causing the humanitarian calamity of the century, says the United Nations.

Amid signs in Washington of deep anxiety about unintended consequences and unforeseeable outcomes.

Germany put a 92-year-old former member of the Nazi Waffen SS on trial Monday on charges that he killed a Dutch resistance fighter in 1944.

President Barack Obama, working to persuade sceptical lawmakers to endorse a US military intervention in civil war-wracked Syria, hosted two leading Capitol Hill foreign policy hawks for talks.

The Syrian crisis and Opposition leader Tony Abbott's competence to deal with international affairs have become a central issue in the fight for power in Australia.