Lawmakers exchanged blows in the Iraqi Kurdish parliament during a debate Wednesday on extending the mandate of the autonomous region's president, Massud Barzani, an official said.

The tenure of Barzani, who has been Kurdistan's president for nearly a decade, has been a bone of contention for years in the region that touts itself as a democratic haven.

Police in eastern India said Wednesday they are investigating letters found at a Catholic school which threaten to burn it down, renewing fears about the safety of the Christian minority.

Police have stepped up security at St. Capitaneo School in West Bengal state after the discovery of the five letters, threatening arson unless it was closed and its 13 nuns removed from the area.

Head of the Mustaqbal bloc MP Fouad Saniora resumed on Wednesday his testimony at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon by being cross-examined by the Defense that focused on the Syrian and Lebanese security systems in Lebanon during the 1990s and up until the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri in 2005, as well as Hizbullah's role in Lebanon.

He said: “I am not in a position to say that Hizbullah assassinated Hariri”

Saudi authorities on Wednesday beheaded a man found guilty of smuggling drugs into the ultra-conservative kingdom, the interior ministry said, amid a surge in executions this year.

Faisal bin Rafaa al-Ashjaie was convicted of smuggling "a large amount of amphetamine pills," the ministry said in a statement on the official SPA news agency.

Pakistan on Wednesday hanged six prisoners condemned for murder, officials said, bringing the total executed since the death penalty was resumed in December to 61.

Four went to the gallows in prisons across Punjab province and two others were hanged in the southern city of Sukkur, including a seminary teacher who slit the throat of a student.

A Turkish court has fined two leading cartoonists after convicting them of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a caricature referring to the increasingly tough environment for journalists in the country.

Ozer Aydogan and Bahadir Baruter from the weekly satirical magazine Penguen were each initially sentenced to 11 months in prison by a criminal court in Istanbul on Tuesday.

Militants with the Islamic State group killed five Islamist-backed militia fighters in an attack on a checkpoint Wednesday in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, a local official said.

The militia fighters are part of the so-called Brigade 166 tasked by the Islamist-backed Tripoli government with securing Sirte.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi criticized on Wednesday the prolonged presidential vacuum, expressing disappointment over the ongoing crisis.

“Our mission as bishops is to confront the current challenges and help citizens to surpass them,” al-Rahi said in his sermon during a mass he held in Bkirki on the occasion of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri held talks Wednesday in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the “dangers” that are threatening the Middle East region and means to strengthen moderation, his press office said.

“The meeting, which lasted nearly an hour and a half, tackled the situation in the Middle East. It also focused on the need to unify efforts to deal with the risks threatening the region and strengthen the moderate majority in the Arab and Muslim worlds,” the office said in a statement.

Britain's police watchdog on Wednesday found no evidence of wrongdoing by officers involved in the shooting of a mixed-race man in London in 2011, which sparked nationwide riots.

Mark Duggan, 29, was shot twice after police stopped the taxi he was travelling in through Tottenham, north London, as part of a pre-planned operation against gang crime.