The U.S. government is considering establishing a direct military hotline with Iran after a series of close encounters between U.S. and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf, The Wall Street Journal reported late Sunday.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials the newspaper, on its website, said the United States is especially worried about a fleet of speedboats likely controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran's elite military force.

Thousands of Flemish nationalists marched Sunday under tight security on the outskirts of Brussels to stake their claim to a part of Belgium at the heart of the country's linguistic feud.

Amid a sea of yellow-and-black flags and balloons -- the colors of northern Dutch-speaking Flanders -- separatists clamored "Our country!" through the largely French-speaking streets of Lindebeek as police helicopters hovered ahead and 300 officers stood watch.

Turkey will freeze its relations with the EU if Cyprus takes the union's rotating presidency next year before a solution is reached on the divided island, the deputy prime minister said late Saturday.

"If the negotiations (on Cyprus) do not end positively and the EU handovers the presidency to southern Cyprus, the main crisis will be between the EU and Turkey. Because then we will freeze our relations with the EU," Anatolia news agency quoted Besir Atalay as saying in a TV interview in northern Cyprus.

U.S. President Barack Obama embarks on a diplomatic marathon this week at the United Nations, touting his approach to Libya, but hoping to contain Palestinian ambitions for statehood.

Leaving behind for 48 hours domestic battles with Republican opponents and an uphill battle to see his jobs plan move through Congress, Obama will huddle with a host of world leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly and speak before the chamber early Wednesday.

A bomb explosion killed one border guard and injured two others in the troubled Russian Caucasus region of Dagestan over the weekend, investigators said on Sunday.

The makeshift bomb targeted a two-car motorcade carrying border guards between the villages of Kitlyart and Khupri, the Moscow-based investigative committee said.

Hong Kong police said Sunday they have made the southern Chinese territory's largest ever cocaine bust, seizing more than half a ton of the drug, worth around $77 million.

Authorities said drugs officers raided separate locations over the weekend, including a warehouse in the city's suburbs, finding a total of 567 kilograms (1,250 pounds) of cocaine.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez traveled to Cuba late Saturday to begin a fourth round of chemotherapy to treat his cancer, saying it would "most likely be the last" round in the treatment.

After meeting here with visiting Bolivian President Evo Morales, on an "unofficial" visit to comfort Chavez during his ailment, the Venezuelan leader left for Cuba to begin treatment on Sunday, adding that he expects to return midweek.

Israel has become an associate member of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), opening the way for full membership in 2013, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

"The association agreement, valid for two years, was signed on Friday by the director general of CERN, Rolf Heuer, and the ambassador of Israel to the United Nations agencies in Geneva, Aharon Leshno-Yaar," spokesman Jonathan Rosenzweig told AFP.

Suspected militiamen and Liberian mercenaries attacked a village in southwestern Ivory Coast, killing 14 people, a military source told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

The attack occurred early Friday in the village of Nigre near the Liberian border. The dead included 10 civilians, the source said, adding: "An army soldier died and three of the assailants were killed."

The Pakistan-based Haqqani militant network was behind last week's Kabul siege and there is evidence linking the group to the Islamabad government, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan has said.

In blunt comments broadcast by state-run Radio Pakistan on Saturday, Ambassador Cameron Munter said: "Let me tell you that the attack that took place in Kabul a few days ago that was the work of the Haqqani network...