Two Myanmar men accused of murdering a pair of British backpackers in Thailand last year should be acquitted because of "unreliable" forensic evidence and a flawed police probe, a court heard Monday.

Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Tun are accused of the murder of 24-year-old David Miller and the rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge, 23, on southern Koh Tao island in September 2014.

Nearly 280 people were killed Monday when a powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake centered in the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan ripped across South Asia, toppling buildings, triggering stampedes and knocking out communication lines.

The full scale of the disaster and human toll was unclear when night fell over the remote and rugged terrain as authorities in Pakistan and Afghanistan rushed to mount rescue efforts.

Pakistan has summoned a senior Indian diplomat in protest at ceasefire violations that killed three civilians including a teenage girl in the disputed Kashmir region, the foreign ministry said on Monday.

The civilians were killed in shelling last week by Indian troops in the Shakargarh and Zafarwal sectors of the Working Boundary, bordering Indian-administered Kashmir in the disputed Himalayan region.

Votes were being counted Monday in what is expected to be Tanzania's tightest election race ever, with the governing party facing the first major challenge to its dominance in decades.

But the opposition Chadema party have alleged fraud in Sunday's presidential, general and local elections.

South Korea said Monday it had offered Japan a long-awaited leadership summit that would be a major step towards improving relations after an extended period of diplomatic rancor and mistrust.

A spokeswoman for the presidential Blue House said the South had proposed a summit between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Park Geun-Hye on the sidelines of a trilateral leadership meeting being held with China in Seoul next week.

Argentina's next president will be decided in a run-off election on November 22 between Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli and Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri.

Their titles aren't the only similarities between the two candidates, who both hail from affluent families with Italian roots and are married to former models-turned-fashion entrepreneurs.

Comedian Jimmy Morales won a landslide victory in Guatemala's presidential race Sunday despite having no political experience, after a campaign upended by a corruption scandal that felled the outgoing president.

Morales, a comic actor and TV personality, declared victory as election officials released the resounding results: 68 percent of the vote for the conservative candidate to 32 percent for former first lady Sandra Torres, with 97 percent of polling stations reporting.

The EU pledged Monday to help set up 100,000 places in reception centers along the migrant route through the Balkans, in a bid to defuse rising tensions on its eastern frontier over how to deal with the crisis.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made the announcement after emergency talks with the heads of 10 EU nations, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, plus the leaders of non-EU Albania, Serbia and Macedonia.

Guatemalan comedian Jimmy Morales' entry into politics started out sounding like a joke, but he is now laughing all the way to the presidential palace after a massive corruption scandal upended the election.

Morales, a comic actor and TV personality with no political experience, had just 0.5 percent support in April, at the beginning of his presidential campaign.

Pro-Russian rebel Konstantin carefully carried an unexploded shell to a hole in the earth under a tree. Laying a charge of TNT, he then blew it up in cloud of black smoke.

After some 18 months the fighting in east Ukraine has all but ground to a halt as a ceasefire has largely taken hold over the past six weeks, but for Konstantin dangerous work still lies ahead.