More than 700,000 refugees and migrants have reached Europe's Mediterranean shores so far this year, amid the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

Some 562,355 people desperately fleeing war and misery reached Greece's shores, while around 140,000 arrived in Italy this year.

A Ukrainian soldier has been killed in a rebel attack near the ruins of Donetsk airport as clashes have intensified at the key flashpoint, a Ukrainian military spokesman said Tuesday.

It was the first death in fighting reported by the Ukrainian army since mid-October as a fragile truce has dampened down most of the violence that claimed over 8,000 lives in the past 18 months.

The Philippines will not accept any refugees sent by Australia if they are expected to live in the Southeast Asian nation permanently, President Benigno Aquino said Tuesday.

Aquino said he was "seriously considering" an Australian government proposal to accept some refugees but only if they were to transit in the Philippines before moving to another country.

The Taliban Tuesday urged charity organizations not to hold back in delivering aid to Afghan victims of a devastating earthquake, saying militants in the affected areas were ordered to provide "complete help".

At least 76 people were killed in Afghanistan after the powerful quake struck Monday in the Hindu Kush region, officials said, with fears that the toll could rise as the full extent of the devastation emerges.

Heavy cross-border fire from Afghanistan killed seven Pakistani soldiers Tuesday at a checkpoint in a troubled tribal area, the army said.

"Seven Frontier Corps soldiers embraced shahadat (martyrdom)," a military statement said. It was not immediately known whether the fire came from militants or from Afghan security forces.

Two men and a woman were convicted at trial in New York on Monday of illegally exporting high-tech electronics from Texas to Russian military and spy agencies.

They were among 11 people charged in the United States in 2012 over a scam that allegedly illegally exported millions of dollars worth of electronics to Russia under the guise of civilian deals.

The United States defied China Tuesday by sending a warship close to artificial islands the rising Asian power is building in disputed waters, prompting Beijing to furiously denounce what it called a threat to its sovereignty.

The USS Lassen passed within 12 nautical miles -- the normal limit of territorial waters around natural land -- of at least one of the formations Beijing claims in the South China Sea.

Tanzania's ruling party presidential candidate took an early lead Tuesday as election officials counted votes for a second day, while several key ministers lost their seats.

The polls are expected to be Tanzania's tightest election race ever, with the governing party facing the first major challenge to its dominance in decades.

The Japanese government Tuesday overturned a move by Okinawa's governor to stop work on a U.S. base relocation site, marking the latest fight in a long-running battle over the controversial project.

The proposal to move the Futenma air base, first mooted in 1996, has become the focus of anger among locals, who insist it should be shut and a replacement built elsewhere in Japan or overseas.

Tokyo on Tuesday said a long-awaited summit with Seoul was not yet confirmed, as media reports said behind-the-scenes bickering over Japan's wartime sex slavery was a key sticking point.