Russian President Vladimir Putin will host his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama for a bilateral visit later this year as the two leaders pledged to intensify cooperation on Syria and counter- terrorism, a Kremlin aide said on Monday.

Putin's foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said Obama had called Putin to discuss future contacts with the Russian leader including a bilateral visit just before the G20 summit that Russia hosts in Saint Petersburg in early September.

Extra medical staff have been sent to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba amid a hunger strike that has spread to nearly two-thirds of the detainees, authorities said Monday.

Some 40 U.S. Navy medical personnel, including nurses and specialists, arrived over the weekend at the U.S. base in Cuba, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House, a military spokesman at Guantanamo said.

Spanish police detained 25 suspects and charged another 16 for possessing and distributing videos over the Internet that showed young children and infants being sexually abused which were likely filmed in countries with a thriving sex tourism, police said Monday.

Over 200 police took part in the operation which involved searches in 18 provinces and the seizure of 136 hard drives, eight laptops, 594 CDs and DVDs and four pen drives, police said in a statement.

An EU-led court in Kosovo on Monday jailed five doctors for organ trafficking at a Pristina clinic in the first such case in the breakaway territory which has already faced allegations of similar crimes during and after its 1998-99 war.

Former Kosovo health secretary Ilir Rrecaj -- who admitted during the trial that he knew that illegal kidney transplants were carried out at the Medicus clinic in Pristina in 2008, but denied covering them up -- was acquitted.

Pirates stormed a cargo ship off Nigeria's oil-producing southern coast, kidnapping five foreign sailors and stealing cash, a watchdog and a security source said Monday.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said the April 25 incident was carried out by "14 heavily armed pirates" who boarded the vessel 45 nautical miles off the Nigerian town of Brass.

German prosecutors said Monday they had charged four men with breaching sanctions against Iran by delivering equipment for an atomic reactor that the West suspects is part of a covert nuclear weapons program.

Three men with joint Iranian-German nationality, identified only as Kianzad Ka., Gholamali Ka. and Hamid Kh., and German national Rudolf M. were arrested last August in police raids involving 90 officers.

The roundabout surrounding the Arc de Triomphe, one of the busiest and most famous in Paris, had to be evacuated on Monday after a false bomb alert, police sources said.

Huge traffic jams built up in streets around the square, including the celebrated Champs-Elysees, as police and a bomb disposal squad carried out checks following the alert around 2.00 p.m (1200 GMT). The all-clear was issued two hours later.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday pledged to renew efforts to find a solution to a decades-long territorial row that has prevented the two sides from signing a World War II peace treaty.

After several hours of talks in the Kremlin, Abe and Putin agreed to order their foreign ministers to reopen talks on finding options for a solution that could be presented to the leaders.

South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela is in "good shape" after his recent hospitalization, the ruling African National Congress said Monday, after President Jacob Zuma visited the democracy icon.

"They found president Mandela in good shape and in good spirits," the party said in a statement.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed Monday that his office has received money from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency over the past decade, with wads of cash reportedly handed over in suitcases and backpacks.

Karzai thanked the U.S. spy agency for what he said was money well spent just hours after The New York Times reported that Karzai's office received tens of millions of dollars in cash in a CIA effort to win influence.