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An advance team of the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arriving in Damascus, Syria, on 1 October 2013.

A nurse prepares re-hydration fluid for patients at a Cholera treatment center in Lester, a town 2 hours north of Port au Prince, Haiti.

U.S. President Barack Obama says he is open to broad budget talks and a potential short term debt limit deal. But he says he will not sit down with Republicans while a government shutdown continues and Americans are subject to what he calls "extortion" by extreme elements in the Republican Party.

The top U.N. official for Somalia said more military force is needed to push Islamist militant group al-Shabab out of its remaining strongholds. Such strongholds include the town of Barawe -- the scene of a U.S. Special Forces strike over the weekend.

Police in Iraq say a string of Monday evening bombings in Baghdad has left at least 38 people dead.

The top United Nations official in Iraq called on political, religious and civil leaders to work together with security forces to halt the surge in violence, following a deadly attack in the northern part of the country.

Egyptian security forces clashed with anti-government protesters Sunday as the nation marked the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. At least 50 people have been killed, over 200 wounded, and more than 300 arrested in the clashes.

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), U.S. Pacific Command, and U.S. Navy sailors aboard the USS Lake Erie (CG 70) successfully conducted an operational flight test of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, resulting in the intercept of a medium-range ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean by the Aegis BMD 4.0 Weapon System and a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IB guided missile.

Hundreds of African migrants are dead or missing in the Mediterranean Sea, after a disabled boat carrying an estimated 500 people to a hoped-for better life in Europe caught fire and sank off an Italian island.

More funds are urgently needed to continue critical humanitarian assistance for more than 1 million temporarily displaced people across north-western Pakistan due to insecurity since 2008, the UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan Timo Pakkala said during a joint UN-Government mission to Kohat District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).