Russia's President Vladimir Putin will skip the G8 summit and ice breaker talks with President Barack Obama next week, the White House said Wednesday, raising new questions about Moscow-Washington ties.

Putin had been expected at the summit at Camp David and to hold talks with the U.S. leader in a first test of whether the "reset" policy between the Kremlin and the White House will survive his return to the presidency.

George Clooney, who hosts a star-studded fundraiser for Barack Obama Thursday, is a Hollywood A-lister turned activist for liberal causes like Sudan, Haiti -- and now the U.S. leader's re-election

The movie heartthrob's $40,000-a-plate dinner is being tipped as possibly the biggest presidential fundraiser ever, bolstering Obama's coffers to the tune of $12 million as he gears up for a fierce re-election fight.

European and world leaders reached out Monday to president-elect Francois Hollande, France's first Socialist head of state in 17 years, despite jitters about his pledge to renegotiate Europe's austerity pact.

The euro sank and stock markets fell as the results of the presidential vote in France and Greece's general election stoked anxiety about the fate of austerity policies designed to end the Eurozone’s crippling debt crisis.

The United States has for years been freeing "high-level" detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan under a deal with insurgent groups aimed at heading off violence, The Washington Post reported.

The newspaper, citing U.S. officials on condition of anonymity, said the program was inherently risky but prisoners released under it must promise to give up violence and if they don't, they would be detained again.

U.S. President Barack Obama holds his first official reelection rallies Saturday at an unfortunate moment, as signs of the strong economic rebound he hopes to ride to a second term seem to be dimming.

Introduced by popular First Lady Michelle Obama, the president will seek to fire up the vast army of supporters that swept him into the White House four years ago, with "Ready to Go" rallies in swing states Ohio and Virginia.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday called for renewed focus on "nation-building here at home" after a decade of war in Afghanistan, as he prepared to hit the campaign trail in Ohio and Virginia.

In his weekly address, Obama recapped his trip earlier in the week to Afghanistan, where he signed a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai and marked the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Russia said Thursday its dispute with the United States over missile defense was near a "dead end" and warned it might have to deploy new rockets in Europe to take out elements of the controversial shield.

"We have not been able to find mutually-acceptable solutions at this point and the situation is practically at a dead end," Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov told a televised conference on missile defense issues.

The Taliban militia announced their "spring offensive" would begin across Afghanistan on Thursday.

Code-named al-Farouq, the primary targets of the offensive would be "foreign invaders, their advisors, their contractors, all those who help them militarily and in intelligence", the militants said on their website.

Taliban bombers attacked a heavily fortified guesthouse used by Westerners in Kabul on Wednesday, in deadly defiance of U.S. President Barack Obama's call that war was ending during a visit to Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death.

Seven people were killed after attackers dressed in burqas detonated a suicide car bomb and clashed with guards at the "Green Village" complex of guesthouses used by foreign organizations including the European Union, the United Nations and aid groups, officials said.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Wednesday a "time of war" was ending in a moment of American renewal, after slipping covertly into Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death.

In a highly political election-year address from outside Kabul, Obama posed as a commander-in-chief who ended two long wars and crushed al-Qaida, and tried to conjure up a new dawn for a nation exhausted by conflict and recession.