Authorities in Kuwait on Tuesday hanged a 33-year-old Egyptian man dubbed a "monster" for the abduction and rape of 17 children under the age of 10, the public prosecution said.

Hajjaj Saadi, who was handed five death sentences, complained shortly before his execution that had not been given any assistance from the Egyptian government, a witness said.

Ethiopia and Egypt have agreed to hold further talks on the impact of an Ethiopian dam to quell tensions between the two countries, the foreign ministers of both nations said Tuesday.

"We agreed that we will start immediately on consultations at both the technical level... and the political level," Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr told reporters, after meetings in Addis Ababa with his Ethiopian counterpart Tedros Adhanom.

As Shimon Peres turns 90, the indefatigable Israeli president is doing what he has always done: looking ahead, preparing for the next challenge and believing that he will see Middle East peace in his lifetime.

Old age has hardly slowed him down. If anything, it seems to have handed Peres a measure of the grace that eluded him as a younger man. And at a time when Israel is widely criticized for its ongoing occupation and continued settlement of war-won land, he operates as something of a one-man reminder that the country once aimed — in its 1948 Declaration of Independence — to be a "light unto the nations."

President Barack Obama expressed skepticism Monday that setting up a no-fly zone in Syria or other major U.S. military action could save lives or tip the balance against President Bashar Assad's regime.

Speaking to PBS television, Obama said critics urging bold intervention failed to understand there was no simple solution and "if you set up a no-fly zone, that you may not be actually solving the problem."

Russia and the U.S. have not abandoned hopes of holding a Syria peace conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after meeting his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama on Monday.

Putin told Obama that their positions on Syria do not coincide but both leaders agree on the need to push for negotiations in Syria's two-year-old civil war, the Associated Press reported.

The war in Syria dominated the start of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland on Monday as Western leaders upped pressure on Russia to back away from its support for President Bashar Assad.

Russia dismissed rumored Western moves to establish a no-fly zone over Syria to help the rebel forces fighting Assad while host Prime Minister David Cameron pushed for progress on a peace conference.

A Taliban office, touted as a tool to help facilitate talks between the militants and the Afghan government, will open on Tuesday in Doha, the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television reported.

Al-Jazeera cited anonymous sources for its Monday report and gave no further details but a Taliban spokesman in Kabul told Agence France Presse he was "unaware" of any such development.

Kuwait's main liberal opposition group said Monday it will participate in future elections as it accepts a ruling of the top court upholding the controversial amendment to the electoral law and dissolving parliament.

The National Democratic Alliance's decision came a day after the Islamist, nationalist and other liberal groups declared they will boycott any future polls based on the amendment confirmed by the constitutional court on Sunday as being in line with the constitution.

A Tunisian court on Monday charged two musicians and a journalist implicated in violence that erupted last week at the trial of a rapper who was controversially jailed for two years for insulting the police.

Aymen Feki and Moustapha Fakhfakh, and French-Tunisian journalist Hind Meddeb, who was not in court having fled the country on Sunday, are to be tried on October 7 for abusing public officials in the course of duty, and attacks on public morals, according to their lawyer.

Relatives of Yemenis being held at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention center protested outside Washington's mission in Sanaa on Monday, calling on U.S. President Barack Obama to free the detainees.

"Freedom, freedom for the detainees!," chanted dozens of protesters, some dressed in orange -- the color of jumpsuits worn by Guantanamo Bay prisoners.