Nato forces in Afghanistan will target Afghan drug lords and opium laboratories in an attempt to stop the booming drugs trade financing Taliban insurgents, it has been agreed .

Portugal's ruling party and the main opposition shot down Friday the latest proposals to allow same-sex marriages in the Roman Catholic country.

Iraqi police say eight people have been killed after a car bomb struck a market in a Shiite enclave in southwestern Baghdad.

I recently wrote that Albania and Kosovo were the two most secular Muslim-majority countries I have ever visited. That is no longer true. Azerbaijan is the most secular Muslim-majority country I have ever visited.

Not once in a week did I heard the muezzin's call to prayer. I saw only two or maybe three women wearing conservative Islamic clothing, and never anything more conservative than a headscarf.

Baku, though, seemed even more secular than Western Europe. The capital looks like a prosperous and mostly Westernized city-state that's slightly out-of-place in a world of the East, like what you'd get if you crashed Moscow and Istanbul together. It makes sense that Baku appears as it does.

Recent archaeological findings indicate that the Turkish city of Istanbul is 6,000 years older than what experts previously believed.

According to Al-Watan newspaper, excavations have yielded four skeletons, along with wooden and ceramic objects, which date back to 8,500 years ago.

It was previously believed that the city was founded 2,700 years ago by the Greeks and named Byzantium, RIA Novosti reported.

Historically known as Constantinople, Istanbul was Turkey's capital until 1923, when the government moved to Ankara.

A massive sell-off on Wall Street and escalating fears of a global recession sent Asian stocks plunging Friday, with Japan's benchmark index plunging more than 10 percent.