G8 leaders have agreed to stamp out the payment of ransoms for hostages kidnapped by "terrorists", British Prime Minister David Cameron's office said Tuesday. Downing Street said the world leaders meeting at a summit in Northern Ireland would also call on companies to follow their lead in refusing to pay for the release of abductees. "Leaders agree to stamp out payment of ransoms to terrorists and call on companies to follow their lead," Cameron's office said on its Twitter feed.

Extremist fighters claiming to be from an Al-Qaeda-linked group have blown up a Shiite religious building in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, a watchdog said on Sunday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Right said the attack occurred on Friday in the eastern village of Hatlah, where rebel fighters killed at least 60 Shiites earlier in the week. "Videos show the destruction of a Shiite hussainiyah by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the village of Hatlah in Deir Ezzor," the group said.

Three car bombs and a suicide attack targeting two Iraqi markets on Monday killed at least 20 people, officials said, the latest in a surge in violence that authorities have struggled to control. Thirteen people were killed and 53 wounded when two near-simultaneous car bombs and a suicide attack tore through a wholesale market north of Baghdad, a police officer and a medic said. The blasts went off in the predominantly Shiite town of Judaida al-Shat, which lies just west of Baquba, capital of Diyala province and one of the most violent areas in the country.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Saturday ordered the "dissolution" of a far-right group allegedly linked to the death of a left-wing student in a Paris street brawl. He asked his interior minister to take steps "immediately" to ban the Revolutionary Nationalist Youth (JNR), his office said in a statement. The JNR is the militant wing of a far-right group called the Third Way. Its leader Serge Ayoub, who has been questioned by police but is not a suspect, on Saturday again denied the group had anything to do with the death of 18-year-old Clement Meric.