WASHINGTON: The United States is working to improve intelligence cooperation with Germany but a sweeping "no-spy" agreement between the two countries is unlikely, a senior Obama administration official said on Tuesday.

LONDON: Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, two former editors of Rupert Murdoch's now defunct News of the World tabloid, were having an affair at the time their reporters are accused of hacking into phones, a court heard on Thursday.

SYDNEY: China and Southeast Asian governments demanded an explanation from the US and its allies on Thursday following media reports that American and Australian embassies in the region were being used as hubs for Washington's secret electronic data collection programme.

WASHINGTON: Enrollment in health insurance plans on the troubled Obamacare website was very small in the first couple of days of operation, with just 248 Americans signing up, according to documents released on Thursday by a US House of Representatives committee.

WASHINGTON: The imbroglio over the tapping of Angela Merkel's phone deepened on Sunday, after a US denial that President Barack Obama was personally informed for years of electronic surveillance against the German chancellor.

BEIJING: Three Chinese anti-graft activists who agitated for officials to disclose their assets go on trial on Monday, in the first case of its kind that underscores the limits of the government's tolerance of challenges to its authority.

OSLO: Residents of a remote village nestled in a steep-sided valley in southern Norway are about to enjoy winter sunlight for the first time ever thanks to giant mirrors.

MELBOURNE: Drop in temperature has slightly eased the bushfire crisis in Australia's New South Wales region on Friday even as firefighters continued to work to contain the blazes which they claimed could take weeks to extinguish.

RIYADH ( Saudi Arabia): Saudi officials say the country's strict codes against political dissent on the internet will be applied to anyone offering online support for a planned protest by women challenging the male-only driving rules in the ultraconservative kingdom.

Ruto, who is accused of orchestrating a wave of violence after Kenya's contested 2007 election, had asked judges to uphold an earlier ruling that he need only attend the opening and closing sessions of his trial in The Hague, as well as hearings at which victims aired their grievances.