Military flights rushed Monday to restock the Australian city of Brisbane before it is cut off by floodwaters that have turned a huge swath of the Outback into a lake, while police confirmed two more deaths in the crisis.

The death toll from some of Australia's worst flooding in a decade is three since Saturday, though police in Queensland state say several other people have drowned in separate incidents involving swollen rivers and water accidents since tropical deluges began in late November. In total, 10 people have died, police said Monday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dared the United States to expel his ambassador or cut off diplomatic ties in retaliation for his rejection of Washington's choice for ambassador to Caracas.

Tensions have been growing over Chavez's refusal to accept American diplomat Larry Palmer and also over U.S. criticisms of a legislative offensive by the president's congressional allies. Lawmakers have granted Chavez expanded powers to enact laws by decree for the next year and a half, a change that opponents condemn as antidemocratic.

Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday warned "unprecedented" flooding would worsen after entire towns were cut off and soldiers airlifted hundreds of people from northeastern towns.

Drenching rains unleashed by a tropical cyclone have left vast tracts of the state of Queensland under water, with 1,000 evacuations and 38 regions declared natural disaster areas.

A Russian military jet crashed overnight Tuesday in the Tula region south of Moscow, killing 11 people on board, the Interfax news agency reported, citing a law enforcement source.

"According to preliminary data, there were 11 people on board the plane, they were all killed," the source told Interfax.

A member of the elite al-Quds force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard has been captured in southern Afghanistan accused of cross-border weapons smuggling, international forces said Friday.

The man, described as a "key Taliban weapons facilitator", was captured Saturday in Zhari district, Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan, a volatile district targeted in recent coalition operations.

At least three soldiers and 24 militants were killed Friday in gunfights in a northwestern Pakistani tribal area after militants attacked paramilitary checkpoints, officials said.

"About 150 Taliban militants attacked five Frontier Corps checkposts in Baidnami village near the border with Afghanistan," a senior security official told AFP.

Parcel bomb blasts in the Chilean and Swiss embassies in Rome injured two staffers on Thursday, officials said, as Italian prosecutors opened an inquiry for a suspected "attack with terrorist aims."

Checks are currently under way in all the embassies in Rome after the blasts and the city's mayor said emergency services were on alert.

South Korean tanks fired artillery and fighter jets zoomed by to drop bombs Thursday in the military's largest air-and-ground firing drills of the year — a show of force a month after a deadly North Korean artillery attack.

The drills, at training grounds in mountainous Pocheon about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the Koreas' heavily fortified border, signaled South Korea's determination to demonstrate and hone its military strength at the risk of further escalation with North Korea.

A suicide bomber killed an Afghan policeman and wounded five civilians in Kunduz on Thursday, the second deadly attack on government security forces in the northern city this week.

The attacker walked up to a checkpoint in a crowded area of the city center and blew up a suicide vest strapped to his body, officials and witnesses said.

A Kuwaiti court ruled on Wednesday that Kuwait-based Zain telecom can open its books for due diligence to the Emirati firm Etisalat which has offered to buy a majority stake in Zain.

Al-Fawares Holding, a leading private investor in Zain, had filed a lawsuit against opening the books, on the grounds that it had not seen an official purchase offer from Etisalat.