Venus Williams withdrew from the Australian Open on Monday, prolonging her absence from the tennis tour because of an autoimmune disease that can cause fatigue and joint pain.

The seven-time Grand Slam title winner announced on Twitter and her website that she wouldn't play in the year's first major tournament, which starts next week. She added, though, that she plans to be back in action next month.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday accused foreign parties of seeking to destabilize Syria but stressed that he would not step down over increased demonstrations against him.

"We will declare victory soon," he said in a speech at Damascus University broadcast live on state television.

A bomb targeting a militia opposed to the Pakistani Taliban exploded in a market close to the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing 35 people in the deadliest blast in the country in several months, officials said.

The explosion hit vehicles being used by the militia in the Khyber region, said local security officer Khan Dad Khan.

Syrian security forces on Monday killed 21 people across the country, 13 of them in the flashpoint central province of Homs, activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime troops killed eighteen civilians and three army defectors, “nine of them under torture.”

Both Ryan Seacrest and Fox executives say they want Seacrest to remain as host of "American Idol" beyond this season. But Fox entertainment chief Kevin Reilly says it's been a "tough negotiation" to make that happen.

Both sides were tight-lipped about the state of those talks at news conferences on Sunday, a few weeks before the nation's most popular television show begins its 11th season.

Greek police say thieves have broken into the country's biggest art museum in Athens and stolen two paintings.

A police spokeswoman says the theft at the state National Art Gallery took place before dawn Monday. The missing works were not identified, and there was no information on their value.

A rare duck normally only seen in Asia has somehow turned up in California, drawing excited bird watchers from all over the U.S. and Canada to a wildlife refuge in the state's Central Valley.

Wildlife officials say a male falcated duck, a bird common in China, was first spotted at the refuge on Dec. 8.

George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and other red-carpet veterans joined some Hollywood newcomers in the Southern California desert this weekend to kick off the two-month-long movie award season at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

"When you're of age: drink," Clooney noted to the newcomers at Saturday night's gala awards ceremony. "That's good advice to pretty much anybody."

Iran's nuclear chief says his country is willing to help what he called "friendly" African nations that have uranium reserves to set up facilities to process the ore into nuclear material.

Fereidoun Abbasi says Iran has mastered the entire nuclear fuel cycle from extracting uranium ore to producing fuel for reactors and is ready to share the technology. Abbasi's comment was reported by the semi-official Mehr news agency Saturday.

Tom Hanks' long gestating Web series is coming to Yahoo.

"Electric City," an animated futuristic series Hanks has been developing for years, will premiere on Yahoo this spring. The series includes 20 episodes, each three- or four-minutes long.