Barack Obama said Thursday he received the "most unique gift" since becoming American president when he was presented with a framed crocodile insurance policy in northern Australia.

Obama made a whirlwind stop in Australia's tropical north to address troops in Darwin on his way to Bali, where he is due at the East Asian Summit.

Rebel troops hit offices of Syria's ruling party on Thursday, a day after a daring raid on an intelligence base that prompted Russia to warn that its longtime ally risks "full-scale civil war."

The rocket-propelled grenade attack in northwestern Idlib province, near Turkey, came as security forces killed eight people, including two children, despite an Arab League ultimatum that Syria halt the bloodshed or risk sanctions.

Italy's former prime minister and cruise-ship crooner Silvio Berlusconi released an album of love songs on his last day in office on Wednesday.

The self-declared Latin lover, who often boasted that he single-handedly kept large groups entertained for hours on end with his charm and silky voice, wrote the lyrics for the album entitled "True Love."

Crisis-hit France has found escape from its ever grimmer economic reality in a feel-good buddy movie about a quadriplegic aristocrat and his black home-help that has stormed the box office.

"An unreal world for a tired France," was Rue89 news website's description of the surprise hit "Intouchables" (Untouchables), which has drawn five million viewers in its first two weeks of release.

The Vatican said Thursday that it was taking legal action to prevent the publication of a photo montage showing the pope kissing a leading imam as part of a Benetton advertising campaign.

The White House slammed the campaign, which also showed U.S. President Barack Obama kissing Chinese President Hu Jintao and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in photoshopped pictures.

Russia's top military commander warned on Thursday of a growing threat of conflicts along its borders that could even escalate into a nuclear war.

"The possibility of local armed conflicts along nearly the whole border has increased sharply," General Nikolai Makarov said, citing the fact that many of the country's Soviet partners are gravitating towards NATO.

Russia's Bolshoi Theatre Thursday acknowledged that the sensational resignation of its best known dance couple had affected preparations for the premiere of the first full ballet in its restored theatre.

In a battle of competing forces worthy of any ballet, world renowned soloists Ivan Vasiliev and Natalya Osipova stunned the dance world this week by announcing they were to join a lesser known Saint Petersburg theatre.

U.S. drone strikes killed at least four militants, destroying an insurgent compound and a vehicle in Pakistan's district of North Waziristan on the Afghan border Thursday, officials said.

The Pakistani officials said unmanned American aircraft fired four missiles into the Razmak area, 60 kilometers south of the region's main town Miranshah in the Taliban and al-Qaida infested badlands.

Rising tension on Eurozone bond markets with record pressure on France and Spain hit stock markets on Thursday, as Germany warned Italy's new prime minister to move fast to avert even deeper crisis.

Investor sentiment was already under pressure after ratings agency Fitch warned overnight that US banks could be exposed if the Eurozone crisis intensified.

A resolution being hammered out at the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Iran sets Tehran no deadline for responding to the body's damning new report on its nuclear program, diplomats said Thursday.

Instead the International Atomic Energy Agency's board will call on the watchdog's head Yukiya Amano merely to brief the board on progress, a Western diplomat said, something the Japanese would most likely do anyway.