The hard-nosed architect of the U.S. drone war against al-Qaida, John Brennan, will face tough questions about secret assassinations Thursday from senators weighing his nomination to lead the CIA.

The confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee promises to focus a rare public spotlight on President Barack Obama's covert campaign to hunt down al-Qaida suspects worldwide in drone bombing raids.

Japan's prime minister said Thursday he wants to find a "mutually acceptable solution" to a decades-old territorial row with Russia and sign a long-delayed peace treaty with Moscow.

Shinzo Abe's apparently conciliatory comments are in marked contrast to his uncompromising stance on a dispute with China over the sovereignty of a different set of disputed islands.

Once again fueling speculation about whether she will run for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton launched a new website even before she officially stepped down as secretary of state.

HillaryClintonOffice.com only features a picture of Clinton -- without the black glasses she took to wearing in the last few weeks of her reign at the State Department -- and a contact sheet.

Colombia's leftist FARC guerrillas on Wednesday called for the decriminalization of the cultivation of marijuana, coca leaf and poppies in the country.

The rebel group, which allegedly finances its operations in part through drug trafficking, said some cultivation of these crops should be legalized for "therapeutic or medicinal uses, industrial uses or for cultural reasons."

About 20 opposition lawmakers have spent the night in the Ukrainian parliament chamber after blockading it in a voting dispute.

Deputies from the opposition Udar (Punch) party, led by world heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko, spent the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in the parliament chamber.

President Barack Obama will seek to add another woman to his cabinet Wednesday by picking business executive Sally Jewell to head the vast Interior Department, a White House official said.

Obama has been criticized for naming middle aged white men to the top jobs in his second term team, but has pledged to promote diversity in his other picks, and has now settled on several prominent females.

France is aiming to have the United Nations take over peacekeeping operations in Mali by April, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Wednesday.

Fabius told journalists France was working to have the current African-led mission put under the umbrella of the United Nations and confirmed France was planning to begin drawing back its troops in March.

Germany's cabinet on Wednesday proposed September 22 as the date for national elections in Europe's top economy, as a new opinion poll put Chancellor Angela Merkel's party 16 points ahead of her nearest rival.

The cabinet proposed the date after the main political parties and the majority of Germany's 16 states signed up to September 22.

A French tanker that was released on Wednesday by armed pirates who seized it earlier in the week is headed to Togo's capital Lome, a port official in the west African nation told Agence France Presse.

A spokesman for Sea Tankers, owner of the vessel that was hijacked off Ivory Coast, had earlier confirmed the release and said that two of the 17 sailors on board reported light injuries when the ship was freed.

Senegal has boosted security in the capital Dakar and a northern city as a war against radical Islamists rages in neighboring Mali, police said Wednesday.

Armored cars and police vehicles were visible in downtown Dakar and police were carrying out checks on motorists in various parts of the capital, an Agence France Presse journalist said.