President Barack Obama downplayed a recent report about the use of U.S. drones in Iraq, indicating that the unmanned aircraft are mainly used for embassy surveillance.

Obama said during an online event on Monday that a New York Times story citing Iraqi officials as expressing outrage over the use of U.S. drones following last year's troop withdrawal was "a little overwritten."

Camilla Williams, believed to be the first African-American woman to appear with a major U.S. opera company, has died. She was 92.

Williams died Sunday at her home in Bloomington, Indiana, her attorney, Eric Slotegraaf, said Monday. She died of complications from cancer, said Alain Barker, a spokesman for the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where Williams was a professor emeritus of voice.

An elephant in Amsterdam's zoo has made history after being fitted with a jumbo-sized contact lens following an eye injury, a statement said Monday.

"Win Thida is the first elephant in Europe with a contact lens," the Artis zoo said on its website.

Hundreds of angry Kuwaiti tribesmen burned down the tent of a controversial candidate standing in general elections this week after he made comments deemed offensive to their clan, witnesses said Tuesday.

No one was injured in the incident, which occurred late Monday, following a campaign rally by the candidate, Mohammed al-Juwaihel, who is competing in Thursday's legislative poll.

Overnight air raids struck an al-Qaida meeting and control post in southern Yemen, killing around 15 people including a long-hunted regional militant leader, tribal chiefs said on Tuesday.

The four night-time raids were "carried out by U.S. planes," according to a local military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. They hit targets in the Loder and al-Wadih areas of Abyan province, a tribal chief said.

Serbian ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj has filed a two-million-euro suit against the U.N.'s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal for "violations of elementary human rights", the court said Monday.

"On account of the violations of elementary human rights during his nine-year detention, Professor Vojislav Seselj seeks damages from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the amount of two million euros," Seselj said in his claim, filed before judges on January 12.

Thirty-five Ethiopian Christians, 29 of them women, face deportation from Saudi Arabia for "illicit mingling" after police raided a private prayer gathering, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.

The New York-based watchdog said the women were subjected to "unwarranted strip search," while the men were beaten and insulted as "unbelievers".

Afghan officials and representatives of the Taliban insurgents fighting the Western-backed government are to hold peace talks in Saudi Arabia, a Riyadh-based Afghan diplomat said on Monday.

"An Afghan government delegation and a Taliban delegation will hold talks in Saudi Arabia," the diplomat told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity, but he could not give a timeframe.

Freezing weather has killed dozens of people in central and eastern Europe over the past few days and temperatures are set to drop even further, authorities warned Monday.

In Poland, police said 10 died over the weekend as temperatures plunged to minus 27 degrees Celsius (minus 16 Fahrenheit), raising the death toll from exposure to 46 since the start of the winter, which had been unusually mild up till now.

Swedish immigration authorities said Monday they were temporarily halting all deportations to Syria due to growing violence as President Bashar al-Assad's regime continues its deadly crackdown.

"The Swedish Migration Board has now temporarily stopped all deportations ... to Syria. The reason is the dramatically worsened security situation in the country," the agency said in a statement.