Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket which hit open ground in southern Israel on Monday, without causing casualties, Israeli police said.

"There was a rocket that was fired... No damage or injuries were caused," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

The U.S. embassy in Kenya warned Monday of a possible attack which is "in the last stages of planning" on Nairobi hotels and key government buildings and urged American citizens to be cautious.

"Timing of the attack is not known, however, the embassy has reason to believe that the potential attack is in the last stages of planning," the embassy said in a statement.

Two demonstrators were killed and more than 20 police injured in Bangladesh on Monday as officers fought to control a crowd of 10,000 people protesting over the disappearance of opposition leader Ilias Ali.

Police said mobs armed with sticks and stones set fire to a local council building and attacked a police station in Sylhet city, home to Ali, a prominent Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) figure who has been missing for six days.

Egypt said on Monday it formally requested that Israel look into a statement attributed to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in which he described Egypt as more "worrying" than Israel's arch-nemesis Iran.

A foreign ministry statement said Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr asked Cairo's ambassador in Tel Aviv to request "clarifications on the accuracy of the statement attributed to the Israeli foreign minister."

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy hunted far-right votes Monday after losing to Socialist Francois Hollande in a first round vote that saw a shock breakthrough by the anti-immigrant National Front.

The right-wing incumbent moved quickly to woo the 18 percent of voters who backed the FN's Marine Le Pen, saying they deserved an answer to their concerns, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel called her showing "alarming".

The World Health Organization said Monday it was "concerned" about an outbreak of a mysterious skin disease in central Vietnam which has killed 19 people, mostly children.

More than 170 people have fallen ill with the unidentified illness, which causes stiffness in the limbs and ulcers on victims' hands and feet that look like severe burns.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Monday there will be no more talks with South Sudan, despite the urging of U.S. President Barack Obama and United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon.

"No negotiation with those people," he said of the South Sudanese regime, which he earlier described as an "insect" that must be eliminated.

Chinese researchers said Monday they have discovered an HIV-blocking agent that could be developed into a gel to limit the sexual transmission of AIDS.

Scientists from Hong Kong University said joint research with Shanghai Targetdrug Co., Nanjing University and City University of Hong Kong had discovered a molecule that blocks HIV from entering human cells.

President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday reached out to the 18 percent of voters who backed far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in France's first-round vote, saying an "answer must be given" to their concerns.

"We must respect the voters' will, it is our duty to listen," Sarkozy told journalists. "There was this crisis vote that doubled from one election to another, an answer must be given to this crisis vote."

Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan, said he opposes the sale of F-16 warplanes to Iraq while Nouri al-Maliki is premier, as he fears they would be used against the region.

The United States has agreed to sell 36 F-16 jets to Baghdad in a multi-billion-dollar deal aimed at increasing the capabilities of Iraq's fledgling air force, a weak point in its national defenses.