Iran briefly closed its airspace to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's plane as she flew for a visit to India on Tuesday, delaying her arrival and sparking a diplomatic row.

Merkel was held up as she flew overnight on Monday-Tuesday for a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pratibha Patil in New Delhi.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday the U.S.-led NATO military in Afghanistan risks becoming an "occupying force" if aerial bombings which cause civilian casualties continue.

His outspoken remarks came days after he issued a "last warning" to foreign forces over civilian casualties following Saturday's killing of what he said was 14 civilians including women and children in an air strike.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced Army General Martin Dempsey as his choice to succeed Admiral Mike Mullen as chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff Monday, rounding out an overhaul of his national security team in his third year in office.

Marine Gen. James Cartwright had long been rumored to be Obama's favorite, and the president singled him out for praise at Monday's Rose Garden announcement. But he turned instead to Dempsey, an accomplished veteran of the Iraq war, to succeed Mullen.

Germany on Monday became the first major industrialized power to agree an end to nuclear power in the wake of the disaster in Japan, with a phase-out due to be completed by 2022.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the decision, hammered out by her center-right coalition overnight, and marked the start of a "fundamental" rethink of energy policy in the world's number four economy.

North Korea said Monday it would no longer deal with South Korea and threatened to retaliate against any moves by Seoul to wage "psychological warfare".

The North's powerful National Defense Commission (NDC) said in a statement it would also cut a military communications line on the east coast and shut a liaison office at the jointly-run Mount Kumgang resort.

Seven land rights and religious freedom activists went on trial in Vietnam on Monday on subversion charges which U.S. lawmakers decried as a "stain" on the country's rights record.

Three of the accused, who are being tried by a court in southern Ben Tre province, are members of U.S.-based opposition group Viet Tan, said the organization, also known as the Vietnam Reform Party.

Twin Taliban attacks killed four people and wounded 24 others, including children, in the Afghan city of Herat and at an Italian-led NATO reconstruction team on Monday, officials said.

The blasts came just weeks before the usually peaceful historic city is to become one of the first places in the war-torn country to transition from NATO to Afghan security control nearly 10 years after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

President Hamid Karzai on Sunday scolded the U.S. military for "arbitrary and unnecessary" missions that kill Afghan civilians, saying it was his last warning on the issue after 14 died in an air strike.

Citing initial reports that 10 children, two women and two men were killed in a strike in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday, Karzai said such operations amounted to the "murdering of Afghanistan's children and women."

A French junior minister accused of sexual harassment resigned Sunday, two weeks after former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York on sex crime charges.

Civil service minister Georges Tron, accused of sexually harassing staff at the town hall where he is mayor, said in his letter of resignation to President Nicolas Sarkozy that he would continue the fight to prove his innocence.

An Afghan provincial governor Sunday said 18 civilians and 20 police were killed by "friendly fire" during U.S.-led air strikes against insurgents in the northeast of the country.

The governor of Nuristan, which was the scene of heavy battles last week between the Taliban and Afghan security forces, said the police and civilians were targeted Wednesday after they were mistaken for militants.