Veteran FBI cyber security expert Shawn Henry said he is fighting the enemy on a new front by joining a startup out to protect firms from online spies.

After 24 years of working for the FBI, Henry has switched to the private sector as the head of a CrowdStrike division specializing in cyber-attack incident responses and identifying adversaries.

China said Thursday it was considering sending observers to monitor a Syrian ceasefire that came into force last week but is under threat as violence escalates.

"China is earnestly looking into whether to send observers to Syria or not," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters at a regular briefing.

Russia said on Thursday it was skipping a meeting of foreign ministers on Syria in Paris as they were only aimed at isolating the regime and would hurt the chances of direct peace talks.

"It seems that this meeting is not aimed at finding the grounds for dialogue within Syria, but quite the opposite," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday accused Syria's Bashar Assad of seeking to "wipe Homs from the map", comparing his campaign to the Libyan regime's attacks on the city of Benghazi.

"Bashar Assad is lying in a shameful way, he wants to wipe Homs from the map like (former Libyan strongman Moammsr) Gadhafi wanted to wipe Benghazi from the map," Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio.

Russian authorities sought on Wednesday to calm mounting anger at shocking cases of police brutality by creating a special unit for crimes committed by the vast, corruption-tainted force.

The powerful Investigative Committee's decision to form the police crimes division follows a spate of reports of officers -- many of them in their early 20s or straight out of school -- torturing suspects to death.

Russia on Wednesday accused the armed opposition in Syria of trying to provoke violence that could involve foreign powers and said it saw nothing standing in the way of dialogue.

"There are plenty of those who would like to see (Kofi) Annan's plan fail in hopes of then demanding other options -- primarily meaning the use of (outside) force," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters.

Russia reinforced its position on Iran's nuclear program Monday, stressing that it did not back increasing “sanction pressure” on Tehran, after weekend talks between Iran and world powers.

The foreign ministry said in a statement that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed Iran with visiting Israeli National Security Council director Yaakov Amidror and warned against further sanctions against Tehran.

A car bomb in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Monday seriously wounded an officer with the Russian FSB security service and killed his wife, investigators said.

"An explosive device blew up under a Ford Focus in the morning in Makhachkala," Yegor Balashov, a spokesman for regional investigators, told Agence France Presse, referring to Dagestan's regional capital.

The U.N. Security Council on Saturday unanimously passed its first resolution on the Syria crisis, allowing an advance party of ceasefire monitors to go to the country on the brink of civil war.

U.N. Resolution 2042 approved the first 30 unarmed military monitors, who U.N. officials said could leave for Damascus within hours.

Russia on Saturday said the U.N. Security Council had "practically agreed" a resolution on sending an observer mission to Syria and called on all sides to strictly obey the Kofi Annan peace plan.

"The resolution on the deployment into Syria of a U.N. monitoring mission advance group has been practically agreed for adoption at the U.N. Security Council," the Foreign Ministry said.