Residents of Japan's Okinawa Sunday elected a governor who opposes plans to relocate a U.S. military base within the island chain, a fresh setback in efforts to resolve a thorny issue in military relations.

Voters in the southern prefecture chose Takeshi Onaga over the incumbent Hirokazu Nakaima, NHK, Jiji Press and Nippon Television reported, citing their exit polls.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Sunday he was "horrified" after the Islamic State jihadist group claimed to have executed U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig, known as Abdul-Rahman after converting to Islam.

"I'm horrified by the cold blooded murder of Abdul-Rahman Kassig," Cameron wrote on Twitter. "ISIL have again shown their depravity. My thoughts are with his family."

The United States Embassy in Lebanon denied on Sunday a report saying that Washington had filed an official complaint to the Lebanese government for attempting to strike a deal with Russia on supplying the army with used T-72 tanks.

The embassy stressed in comments to Naharnet that “the report is false.”

The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group carried out a series of air strikes overnight in the embattled Syrian town of Kobane, a monitor and activists said Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported intensifying clashes between Kurdish fighters defending Kobane and IS jihadists in the south of the town, which lies on the Turkish border.

The body parts of several babies have been found in a parcel destined for the United States, Thai police said Sunday.

A baby's head, several feet and "sheets of skin" -- including one taken from an adult and bearing a large tattoo -- were discovered Saturday after staff at a Bangkok parcel company scanned the package.

A suicide bomber on Sunday attacked a vehicle convoy carrying Afghan lawmakers  including a prominent female MP, killing three civilians and injuring 22 others, officials said.

The blast, in which the attacker detonated an explosives-packed car, left the MPs' vehicles badly damaged on a main road in the west of Kabul, close to the parliament.

Sanctions-hit Russia risks deeper isolation from the global community unless it takes a different path on Ukraine, U.S. President Barack Obama said Sunday at the end of a stormy G20 summit.

Obama said if President Vladimir Putin "continues down the path that he is on, violating international law, providing heavy arms to the separatists in Ukraine.... then the isolation that Russia is currently experiencing will continue".

U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday rejected any alliance with Bashar Assad against the Islamic State group, arguing that the Syrian ruler was illegitimate and that any such pact would backfire.

"Assad has ruthlessly murdered hundreds of thousands of his citizens. As a consequence, he has completely lost legitimacy with the majority of the country," Obama told reporters after a G20 summit in Brisbane. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday shrugged off a hail of Western fire over the Ukraine crisis as G20 leaders wrapped up an annual summit focused on a drive to overhaul the global economy. 

At the summit in Brisbane, Putin broke protocol by delivering remarks to the media before the host leader's closing news conference, and then flew out a little early. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced a technological innovation plan to ensure America's military superiority in the 21st century, expressing concern over technologies and arms obtained by Hizbullah.

“Technologies and weapons that were once the exclusive province of advanced nations have become available to a broad range of militaries and non-state actors, from dangerously provocative North Korea to terrorist organizations like Hizbullah,” Hagel said at a national defense conference at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation in Simi Valley, California.