A string of bombings targeting Shiite mosques in Iraq killed at least 23 people and wounded dozens on Friday, officials said. The attacks were the latest in spectacular assaults staged by insurgents seeking to undermine the Shiite-led government's efforts to achieve security across the country.

Australian teenagers are being lured into buying protein powders, which are often made and distributed in unknown circumstances with mysterious ingredients, from internet, according to experts.

US President Barack Obama lost his first choice of wheels on Thursday, after one of his hulking armoured limousines broke down in Israel.

Egyptian police in a joint operation with Interpol arrested a cousin of slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, wanted for his alleged role in his country's 2011 civil war.

Car bombs and a suicide blast hit Shi'ite districts of Baghdad and south of Iraq's capital on Tuesday, killing at least 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Egyptian security services have banned a film about the Jews of Egypt on the eve of its scheduled release, the director said.

A suicide bomber blew up a car in northern Iraq on Monday, killing two policemen and a woman, and wounding 100 other people, many of them schoolchildren, officials said.

Al-Qaeda's Iraqi front group claimed an attack on a convoy in west Iraq that killed 48 Syrian soldiers and nine Iraqi guards, in a statement posted on jihadist forums on Monday.

Venezuelans will vote April 14 to choose a successor to Hugo Chavez, the elections commission announced as increasingly strident political rhetoric begins to roil this polarized country.

President Barack Obama is playing down expectations for a Mideast peace breakthrough during his upcoming trip to Israel, telling American Jewish leaders that he won't be carrying a "grand peace plan" when he arrives in the region later this month.