Bomb attacks on churches during Christmas services and a suicide blast killed at least 35 people in Nigeria on Sunday amid spiraling violence claimed by Islamists.

A purported spokesman for Islamist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for a bombing of the church outside the Nigerian capital and other violence in recent days that has stoked fear and anger in Africa's most populous nation.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon is "gravely concerned" at escalating violence in Syria but the onus is on President Bashar al-Assad to fully carry out an Arab League peace plan, a spokesman said Friday.

Ban spoke out as the U.N. Security Council stepped up wrangling over a resolution on the Syria crisis. While the United Nations says more than 5,000 people have been killed in the government crackdown, the Security Council has failed to agree any formal resolution on Syria.

More than 2,000 members of Syria's security forces have been killed in nine months since anti-regime protests broke out, state news agency SANA said on Thursday.

"In response to a fallacious U.N. report on the situation in Syria, we have informed the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that the number of martyrs has surpassed 2,000 members of the security forces and the army," according to a letter SANA says was sent.

Syria has decided to slash public sector spending in a bid to head off a crisis for an economy that has taken a beating due to months of unrest and sanctions, media said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Adel Safar has issued an order for the public sector to reduce spending by 25 percent in a move designed at "limiting waste", Al-Baath newspaper reported.

A delegation from Cyprus will arrive on Wednesday in Beirut to continue the discussions with Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour and Lebanese experts over the demarcation of the maritime borders between the two countries.

As Safir newspaper reported on Tuesday that the delegation will hold talks with Mansour as Cypriot experts will visit Lebanon later on.

Minutes after the announcement of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s death, the world leaders were on alert on Monday urging Pyongyang to engage with the global community.

The United States swiftly closed ranks with its ally South Korea, as President Barack Obama called his close friend President Lee Myung-Bak of South Korea at midnight on the U.S. east coast, as Washington and its regional allies digested the death of the Stalinist state's volatile 69-year-old leader.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri stressed on Saturday on the importance of confiscating the “illegal arms,” noting that the Syrian people are getting closer to their “freedom.”

“Weapons should be only with the security forces and the army,” Hariri said in English, answering a question from a Twitter user.

Iran has prepared for "the worst case scenario" to circumvent a toughening of Western sanctions targeting its financial sector and oil industry, its foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said in an interview published Saturday.

"We are not really worried," Salehi told the official IRNA news agency. "Appropriate responses have been prepared for the worst case scenario, and we have devised a road map" to circumvent new sanctions.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday lifted sanctions on Libya's central bank and a key investment bank freeing tens of billions of dollars to ease a post-Gadhafi cash crunch.

The United States immediately announced it would unblock more than $30 billion dollars of assets of the Central Bank of Libya and its subsidiary, the Libyan Foreign Bank (LFB). Britain said it would release more than $10 billion.

The Foreign Ministry has filed a complaint to the United Nations on Saturday over the Israeli spy device that was discovered in southern Lebanon a few weeks ago, reported the National News Agency.

The device was discovered in the outskirts of the southern towns of Deir Kifa and Srifa.