A court in Uzbekistan has sentenced two men to life in prison for raping and murdering 11 women in the Central Asian republic and neighboring Kazakhstan, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Uzbek citizens Abduseit Ormanov and Polat Pardaliyev robbed, raped and then killed seven women in Uzbekistan and four women in neighboring Kazakhstan between 2011 and 2012, prosecutor Azizbek Nazarov said.

The eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov has declared that she has no political ambitions and just wants be an artist, after the authorities of the Central Asian state took steps to curb her media empire.

Gulnara Karimova, 41, a fashion designer and pop singer who is believed to have wielded significant power until recently, said that in the East the presidency is a destiny of "strong men" elected by the people.

The eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov on Friday suggested she had been poisoned and accused a top official of plotting against her, after the reclusive Central Asian state took steps to curb her media empire.

Gulnara Karimova, 41, a fashion designer and pop singer who is believed to have wielded significant power until recently, took to Twitter to hint that a top official was plotting to succeed her father.

French authorities are investigating a money laundering case that targets Gulnara Karimova, the Uzbek leader's daughter, among others, a judicial source said Friday.

The glamorous eldest daughter of Islam Karimov, who has ruled Uzbekistan with an iron fist since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Karimova was educated at Harvard and is closely watched as a possible successor to her 75-year-old father.

Russia was Tuesday set to question the sole survivor of a deadly police raid outside Moscow that authorities said had prevented a major attack in the capital.

The operation in the Moscow region town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo took place shortly after twin car bombs killed four and injured more than 40 in the restive Dagestan region.

Uzbekistan has tightened controls on underage marriage by making it punishable with fines and even jail, a move officials in the secular but mostly Muslim country said was made out of concern for mothers and children's health.

Marrying age is set at 18 for men and 17 for women in Central Asia's most populous country. However, there has had been no actual punishment for breaches in the Uzbek family code until now.

A French court handed down an eight-year jail term on Tuesday to a Turkish-Dutch man for masterminding a group that had funded the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

The Paris court also permanently banned Irfan Demirtas, 53, from France, where he had been held since shortly after his 2008 Dutch arrest on charges of financing terrorism.

The Central Asian state of Uzbekistan has with much fanfare put on display what it says is a lost masterpiece of Western art, a painting by Italian Renaissance master Paolo Veronese.

The painting, which Uzbek experts say is one of several versions Veronese painted portraying the lamentation after Christ’s descent from the cross, has gone on display at the Uzbek State Arts Museum.

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday agreed a deal with Kyrgyzstan that will allow Russia to keep a military base in the country until 2032 as Moscow and Washington jostle for influence in the region.

The agreement -- essentially a set of memorandums of intent ahead of formal treaties -- also foresees Russia wiping out nearly $500 million (380 million euros) in debt owed by Kyrgyzstan, a significant sum for the central Asian ex-Soviet state.

A U.S. federal judge sentenced an Uzbek man to more than 15 years in prison Friday on terror and weapons charges for threatening to kill U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. prosecutors said.

Ulugbek Kodirov, 22, was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in prison for providing material support to terrorism, threatening to kill the president and possession of a firearm by an illegal alien, they said in a statement.