Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, on a landmark visit to the United States, called Thursday for the release of jailed members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot.
Pope Benedict XVI arrives on Friday for a three-day visit to Lebanon, a Middle Eastern country riven by sectarian tensions as fighting rages next door in Syria.
China's likely next president Xi Jinping has cancelled a meeting with the visiting US Secretary of State, a US official said Wednesday, amid friction between the two global powers.
French judges investigating suspicions that Yasser Arafat was poisoned are seeking to travel to the West Bank and have the Palestinian leader's body exhumed.
German far-left MP Sevim Dagdelen on Sunday visited Julian Asange, who has been holed up at Ecuador's embassy in London since June, and afterwards expressed her solidarity with the Wikileaks founder.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta was on Wednesday to hold top-level talks in Israel expected to focus on ways of resolving the international standoff over Iran's disputed nuclear programme.
The US will present its highest award to Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi in September when she makes her first US trip in more than two decades.
Ban Ki-moon begins a tour of the Balkans this week which will include the first visit by a UN chief to the site of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and to Kosovo since it declared independence in 2008.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the scene of a recent flood that killed 172 people, berating officials for possibly deceiving him about the timeliness of their response.
A group of Taiwanese academics has visited the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, defence officials said Monday, amid continued tensions over rival claims to the area.