Two U.S. tourists have been kidnapped in Egypt's Sinai peninsula by Bedouins protesting the arrest of one of their tribesmen on a drugs charge, a security official said on Thursday.

The tourists were abducted late on Wednesday near the resort of Dahab on the Red Sea, the official said, adding that talks were under way in a bid to secure their release.

The Obama administration added new sanctions on a Syrian bank Wednesday as a top White House official said the U.S. wants to economically throttle the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and cut off salaries of pro-government thugs blamed for the grisly massacre in Houla.

The Treasury Department said the Syria International Islamic Bank has been acting as a front for other Syrian financial institutions seeking to circumvent sanctions. The new penalties will prohibit the SIIB from engaging in financial transactions in the U.S. and will freeze any assets under U.S. jurisdiction.

The United States said Tuesday that it hopes the massacre in Syria sparks a "turning point" in Russia's reluctance to take tougher action against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Washington welcomes the fact "that the Russians are willing to have a full investigation (of the massacre) because we think it's undisputable what that investigation is going to show," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

China on Friday strongly criticized a human rights report issued by the United States, calling the document "fraught with prejudice" and insisting its rights record was improving.

The U.S. report, issued days after China allowed one of its best-known activists to go to New York to study, said Beijing's human rights record deteriorated in 2011 as authorities stepped up efforts to stifle dissent.

Russian intelligence thinks the Superjet liner that crashed during an exhibition in Indonesia may have been sabotaged by the United States, one of the country's most widely read dailies said on Thursday.

In an article titled "Are the Americans implicated in the Superjet crash?" the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid cited unnamed officials as saying that Russia's aviation rivals were interested in seeing the plane fail.

A Frenchwoman who caused a security scare on a U.S.-bound flight after she claimed to have been fitted with some kind of device will be sent home without charge, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

After investigations, no criminal complaint will be filed against Lucie Zeeko Marigot, a French citizen and a native of Cameroon, who caused her flight from Paris to North Carolina to be diverted to Maine, the Department of Justice said.

At least six people were injured when a fire broke out on a U.S. nuclear submarine at a dockyard in the state of Maine, but the nuclear reactor on board was not in danger, the navy said Thursday.

The fire broke out around 6:00 pm (22:00 GMT) Wednesday on the USS Miami -- which was in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for maintenance and upgrades -- and was still burning early Thursday, according to port spokeswoman Tami Remick.

The United States gave a cool reception Tuesday to a mooted deal between the IAEA and Iran, saying the agreement marked a "step forward" but stating that Tehran would be judged on its actions.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said upon returning from Tehran that he and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator made a "decision" to reach an agreement on the U.N. watchdog probing suspected weapons activities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spelled out his views on security, bilateral relations and regional cooperation in a letter to U.S. counterpart Barack Obama, a Russian diplomatic source said Monday.

The letter was delivered by Putin's Kremlin predecessor Dmitry Medvedev who attended the G8 summit at Camp David at the weekend after Putin had cancelled his U.S. visit on the grounds that he was too busy picking a cabinet.

Al-Qaida militants on Monday claimed they raked with gunfire a convoy carrying four U.S. military advisers in Hudaida, but American officials said they had no such personnel in the west Yemen port city.

Al-Qaida said in a statement that jihadists had opened fire on Sunday on two cars carrying four American military advisers who were in the Red Sea city on a training mission with the Yemeni Coast Guard.