Indian troops on Friday shot dead two suspected Islamic militants in Kashmir while seven civilians received police bullet injuries when they protested the slaying of the rebels, officials said.

The two militants belonging to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba rebel group were killed while three troopers were wounded in a firefight with militants in Pulwama town, 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Kashmir summer capital Srinagar.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed into law a ban on the adoption of Russian children by American families that activists slammed for making orphans pawns in a diplomatic row between Moscow and Washington.

The law -- retaliation for a U.S. law punishing Russian officials implicated in the 2009 prison death of the whistle-blowing attorney Sergei Magnitsky -- will take effect on January 1, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who topped an illustrious military career by commanding the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in 1991 but kept a low public profile in controversies over the second Gulf War against Iraq, has died. He was 78.

A sister of Schwarzkopf, Ruth Barenbaum of Middlebury, Vermont, said Thursday that he died in Tampa, Florida, from complications from pneumonia. "We're still in a state of shock," she said by phone. "This was a surprise to us all."

The United States evacuated its embassy in the Central African Republic on Thursday and temporarily halted its operations, amid security fears after rebels seized large swathes of the country.

The State Department said it had not broken off diplomatic ties with the beleaguered government in Bangui, but warned U.S. citizens not to travel to the mineral-rich but chronically unstable country while unrest continues.

North Korea has repaired extensive rain damage at its nuclear test facility and could conduct a detonation on two weeks notice, a U.S. think-tank said Friday, citing satellite imagery analysis.

With the U.N. Security Council debating possible sanctions against the North following the launch earlier this month of a long-range rocket, there has been widespread speculation that Pyongyang may carry out its third nuclear test.

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who fell ill in early December and hasn't been seen in public since, will be back at her desk on Monday, her closest aide said Thursday.

"She's recuperating at home," and will take up her official duties again "next week" Philippe Reines wrote in brief email to Agence France Presse when asked about the health of Washington's most traveled top diplomat.

Heavy snow and strong winds battered the northeastern United States Thursday, intensifying post-Christmas travel woes, after violent weather left at least nine people dead and many without power.

More than 2,750 flights have been canceled since Tuesday as the huge storm wreaked havoc from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes before heading for the northeast, including 500 on Thursday, according to flight tracker FlightAware.

Around 200 heavily-armed militants stormed two government paramilitary camps in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing two security personnel and kidnapping at least 22, officials said.

The attackers armed with heavy weapons including mortars and rocket launchers struck before dawn at the two militia posts outside Peshawar, the main city of northwest Pakistan, close to the restive tribal areas that border Afghanistan.

The son of Pakistan's slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto launched his political career Thursday on the anniversary of his mother's death, vowing to continue her fight for democracy.

More than 200,000 people gathered at the Bhutto family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in the southern province of Sindh to pay their respects to Benazir and to hear Bilawal Bhutto Zardari make his first major public speech.

Mali's new Prime Minister Diango Cissoko called Thursday for military intervention by an African force to help take back the Islamist-controlled north "as quickly as possible".

"We have confidence in this intervention," Cissoko told journalists in Abidjan after meeting with Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara, the current head of the West African bloc ECOWAS which is preparing the intervention force.