A new study warns US President Barack Obama of Washington's defeat in Afghanistan, calling on the United States to adopt a plan B for the nine-year war.

"What we have been doing for several years is not just failing but counterproductive," said Matthew Hoh, the director of the Afghanistan Study Group.

Eighteen people have died and several others have been wounded in a shooting at a shoe factory in San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras, police said.

The incident began at 3:45 p.m. local time onTuesday, when two men carrying AK-47 assault rifles burst into the factory in the coastal city and began shooting.

Protestors have taken to the streets of Buenos Aires calling for the release of all political prisoners and demanding an end to pro-Israeli behavior.

Thousands of people gathered in Buenos Aires to demand the release of all political prisoners, specially that of Roberto Martino a civil rights leader who was detained during 2009 anti-Zionism protests, reported PressTV.

Iran's first Ambassador to Bolivia, Ale Reza Qezili, has met with and submitted his credentials to President Evo Morales.

The Iranian envoy submitted his credentials to the Bolivian president at the Quemado presidential palace in La Paz on Monday, IRIB reported.

General Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a prominent Afghan military commander, politician and vice president to Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, has reportedly died in France.

Fahim, who suffered from bone cancer and diabetes, died in a hospital in the French capital, Benawa, an Afghan media outlet reported on Monday.

The Colombian Air Force has killed at least 15 suspected leftist rebels during an Air Force bombing raid near the country's eastern border, a report says.

Colombia's Air Force pounded hideouts of the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), the country's second-largest rebel group, in eastern Arauca Department, AFP reported on Saturday.

A number of Mexican politicians have been killed in a plane crash in the south of the country, police and political officials say.

However, there are conflicting reports as to exactly how many people died when a private plane crashed near a beach resort in Huatulco.

South Korea and the United States are to go ahead with a joint military exercise on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, officials say.

According to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US military in Seoul, the drills, scheduled to begin on Sunday, will involve over 17,000 American and South Korean troops.

A shootout between army troops and suspected drug dealers in northeast Mexico has left at least 25 purported drug cartel gunmen, Mexican authorities said.

The killings happened on Thursday in the border state of Tamaulipas, just south of Texas, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Fourteen police officers have been killed and seven others wounded by explosion of a mine allegedly laid by leftist rebels in southern Colombia, said a police commander.

The police officers were killed when their vehicle was blown up the mine on a road in southern Caqueta department late Wednesday, the AFP reported.