The Council of Europe's human rights chief urged Poland, Romania and Lithuania Monday to lift the lid on CIA "black sites" where detainees were allegedly tortured on their soil.

The Central Intelligence Agency, as part of its clandestine counter-terrorism operations, set up "black sites" in at least seven overseas locations, including some in Europe, Thomas Hammarberg, the council's human rights commissioner, wrote on his blog.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, his hopes for the French presidency scuppered by a sensational New York sex scandal, returned to Paris Sunday to a media frenzy and an uneasy welcome from his Socialist allies.

The former IMF chief and his journalist wife Anne Sinclair arrived at dawn at Charles de Gaulle airport on an Air France flight and were whisked off in a black Peugeot to their apartment in the chic Place des Vosges.

The head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Mohammed Raad accused on Sunday the opposition of seeking to create unrest in Lebanon through executing a foreign agenda in Lebanon.

He said: “The opposition is still delusional in thinking that it can strip the Resistance of its arms.”

U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly lauded Premier Najib Miqati for announcing that the Lebanese government will fund the international tribunal and rejecting to interfere in Syria’s internal affairs.

In remarks to An Nahar daily published Saturday, Connelly also praised Miqati for saying Lebanon was committed to international resolutions particularly 1701.

A Lebanese man who blamed a fraud scheme on his addiction to day trading in stocks has been sentenced to four years in prison in the United States.

Hussein Ali Mehdi asked a judge to spare him from prison, the Eugene Register-Guard of the State of Oregon (http://bit.ly/q5PvvC) reported.

The U.S. Treasury Department slapped sanctions on Syria's foreign minister and two other top officials Tuesday, adding new pressure on the embattled regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Asset freezes and bans on business interactions were imposed on Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, top presidential advisor Buthaina Shaaban, and Syrian ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul Karim Ali, the Treasury said.

The state of Vermont on Monday battled historic flooding that swamped town centers as the United States limped back to normal from Hurricane Irene, blamed for at least 29 deaths.

Major cities including New York took unprecedented evacuation measures and were largely spared the full wrath of Hurricane Irene, which was downgraded on Sunday to a tropical storm as it drenched a vast stretch of the U.S. East Coast.

The death toll from Irene has risen to 12 across five eastern U.S. states, emergency officials said Sunday, as the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm, passing New York City.

Half of the deaths were in North Carolina, where Irene made landfall early Saturday morning with 85 mile (140 kilometer) per hour winds, before heading up the eastern seaboard and scoring a rare direct hit on New York.

The United States and Israel are monitoring Syria's suspected arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, fearing that terror groups could take advantage of the revolt against President Bashar Assad to obtain chemical agents and long-range missiles, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday.

Citing unnamed officials from both countries, the newspaper said U.S. intelligence services believe Syria's nonconventional weapons programs include significant stockpiles of mustard gas, VX and Sarin gas and the missile and artillery systems to deliver them.

Washington's iconic monuments were off-limits to disappointed tourists and schools around the region were also shuttered Wednesday, as authorities assessed the damage from a rare U.S. east coast earthquake the previous day.

Officials announced that the Washington Monument, one of the most recognizable symbols of the U.S. capital city, would be closed to visitors indefinitely after cracks were found near the summit of the soaring obelisk.