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Germany says its leader is in Afghanistan to on a surprise visit to the nation's troops serving with NATO's force in a war against Taliban insurgents.

The Philippine foreign secretary says he is recommending to President Benigno Aquino III to pull out all Filipino U.N. peacekeepers from the Golan Heights following the abduction of four by Syrian rebels.

When many struggling families in this eastern Iranian city take stock of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's legacy, it's not about the oratory full of bluster and menace or his tussles with Iran's ruling clerics that are known to much of the world. What matters more here are the dusty rows of government-subsidized, two-story apartment buildings on the outskirts of the once-neglected outpost — testament to an effective populist outreach that has won the president millions of loyal backers in the provinces.

China said on Monday that Japan must face up to history and respect the feelings of those who were victims of wartime aggression, after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an offering to a shrine seen as a symbol of Japan's former militarism.

Nicolas Maduro is due to be sworn in as the first Venezuelan president to take office after 14 years of Hugo Chavez.

Federal agents arrested a Mississippi man suspected of sending letters that showed evidence of ricin in initial testing to President Obama and a Republican senator, according to two officials.

US President Barack Obama has condemned the bombings at the Boston Marathon as a "terrorist act". He said the attack had been a "heinous and cowardly act", but said it was not yet known who carried out the attack and why. The FBI has said there are "no known additional threats" beyond the two bombs which went off. Three people were killed, including an eight-year-old boy, and more than 150 injured by the bombs.

Venezuela awoke to political turmoil Monday after Hugo Chavez's chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, won the country’s presidential election by such a tight margin that his rival demanded a recount. The country, already shaken by the death from cancer of its dominating leader, faces uncertainty after Maduro secured 50.7 percent of the votes in Sunday's election, compared with 49.1 percent for Henrique Capriles -- a difference of just 235,000 ballots.

Totals suggest that the organization may struggle to raise the kind of resources that the president was able to rely on during his campaigns... Organizing for Action, the grass-roots group that grew out of President Obama’s campaign machine, raised just shy of $4.9 million during the first quarter of 2013, according to an e-mail to the group’s supporters.

Foreign ministers from the G8 group of rich countries failed to patch up deep divisions over Syria or come up with a plan on North Korea during a meeting in London on Thursday.