The United States called Monday on Lebanon to ensure transparency in any action against former minister Michel Samaha, fearing a spread of violence from neighboring Syria.

Samaha was arrested on Thursday and a Lebanese judge has accused him and Syria's security chief, General Ali Mamlouk, of planning sectarian killings and explosions in the North.

Foreign ministers preparing for a summit in Mecca of the Islamic Cooperation Organization on Monday recommended the expulsion of Syria from the 57-nation bloc, its secretary general said.

Asked by reporters whether the foreign ministers had decided to call for a suspension after their meeting in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah to prepare for Tuesday's summit, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said: "Yes."

Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels confirmed in a statement on Monday that they were holding the lawmaker Huseyin Aygun captive and warned Turkey to abandon its rescue operation.

"The lawmaker Huseyin Aygun has been detained by our fighters," rebels said in a statement given to the pro-Kurd news agency Firatnews.

Fresh sanctions slapped by the United States are meant to "expose and disrupt" links between Iran, Hizbullah movement and Syria, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday.

She said the "number one goal" of Washington and Ankara was to hasten the end of Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus and stop the bloodshed, while warning that Syria must not become a haven for Kurdish rebels battling Turkey.

Syrian troops and rebels fought fierce battles on Friday in the city of Aleppo, where several people died when a shell crashed into a bakery as hundreds queued for bread, Agence France Presse reported.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime forces shot dead 115 civilians and rebels across the country.

The United States on Friday added Hizbullah to a list of organizations under sanctions for their ties to the Syrian regime.

"This action highlights Hizbullah's activities within Syria and its integral role in the continued violence the Assad regime is inflicting on the Syrian population," the U.S. Treasury Department charged in a statement.

Iranian police are looking for a phony sorcerer who conned a man into believing he was invisible and could rob banks, the Jam-e Jam newspaper said Thursday.

Customers at a Tehran bank quickly overpowered the deluded robber after he started snatching banknotes from their hands.

A woman in China tied a blow-up sex doll to a roadside tree intending to slow down traffic on Wednesday, The Sun reported.

Infuriated at the police for failing to pursue speeding motorists passing by her home in the city of Ningbo, the resident of the house Lin Chen, 67, took matters into her own hands.

Members of a Russian sect found living in an underground bunker with some 20 children, many of whom have never seen the sun, have been charged with child abuse last week.

The digging began about a decade ago and 70 followers of the sect moved into an eight-level subterranean residence of small cells with no light, heat or ventilation.

World famous tennis player Roger Federer told CNN on Monday that he may make another attempt to win the Olympic singles gold medal he wants in Rio in four years' time.

The world No. 1 was beaten in the London 2012 Olympic Games by Britain's Andy Murray on Monday, the man Federer beat to secure his seventh Wimbledon title just over a month ago.