WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama will meet this week with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the White House said on Sunday, in a prominent show of US support for Ukraine's fledgling new government.

MASNA, Lebanon: Rebels in Syria freed more than a dozen Greek Orthodox nuns on Monday, ending their four-month captivity in exchange for Syrian authorities releasing dozens of female prisoners.

WASHINGTON: Preparing ground for his potential presidential run in 2016, Indian-American Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has slammed Barack Obama as the worst president in history and took a dig at his inability to stop Russia from invading Ukraine.

WASHINGTON: It turns out all those years Russian leader Vladimir Putin was cavorting bare-chested outdoors, demonstrating his judo skills and darting whales, a Pentagon researcher may have been studying him for clues to his behavior.

 

CARACAS, Venezuela: Thousands of Venezuelans mourned the passing of President Hugo Chavez on the first anniversary of his death on Wednesday, while National Guard troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets at anti-government activists who pressed on with street protests despite the commemorations.

LOS ANGELES: Russian President Vladimir Putin is a tough but thin-skinned leader who is squandering his country's potential, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday, a day after she likened his actions on the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine to those of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

NEW YORK: The son-in-law of Osama bin Laden acted as the al-Qaida leader's right-hand man and appeared alongside the terror mastermind in a propaganda video just one day after the carnage of the 9/11 attacks, US prosecutors said on Wednesday.

PEREVALNE (UKRAINE): Warning that it was "on the brink of disaster," Ukraine put its military on high alert Sunday and appealed for international help to avoid what it feared was the possibility of a wider invasion by Russia.

SEOUL: North Korea on Monday deported a 75-year-old Australian missionary detained since last month for allegedly distributing religious materials.

 MAIDUGURI (Nigeria): Twin car bombs at a bustling city marketplace blasted buildings to rubble and tore apart bodies the same night an attack on a farming village razed every thatched-roof hut.