President Barack Obama might be noticing a familiar pattern. Whether it's allegations of Secret Service personnel consorting with prostitutes, candid moments caught live on microphones or launching bombs over Libya, his foreign trips seem to get overshadowed by distractions.

That's been the case on the coast of Colombia, where Obama will wrap up a weekend summit with a news conference that may well force him to confront the latest troubles — misconduct claims against Secret Service and military personnel assigned to make Cartagena secure for his visit.

Western nations and Russia on Friday put forward rival U.N. Security Council resolutions on sending ceasefire observers to Syria as they wrangled over conditions for the mission.

The dispute after two days of tough negotiations means no vote is likely until Saturday on any final resolution which would allow an advance party of 30 unarmed military observers to go to Syria next week.

The United States on Friday called on Iran to show "seriousness" in nuclear talks in Turkey, after Tehran warned it was discouraged by the approach of Western nations.

After a 15-month hiatus, officials from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany (known as the P5+1) will meet with Iranian counterparts in Istanbul on Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday she is alarmed about the "ongoing violence" in Syria on the eve of a ceasefire deadline.

In remarks to the Group of Eight foreign ministers, she also voiced concern about the problems facing U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan as he tries to get Syria to implement his peace plan that calls for a ceasefire on Thursday.

"Battleship" steams into movie theaters overseas this week, giving international audiences the first chance to decide whether a board game-based movie is sea-worthy.

The Hasbro Inc. search-and-destroy game was once a way for kids to while away summer afternoons. But as it debuts in Europe on Wednesday, "Battleship" the movie has become a potential franchise, sporting Michael Bay-inspired special effects, aliens invading Earth, a bikini-model actress, superstar Rihanna and, of course, lots of guns.

U.S. health authorities on Tuesday ordered revised labels on some types of birth control including German pharmaceutical giant Bayer's Yaz pills to advise of a possibly higher risk of blood clots.

"Women who use birth control pills with drospirenone (like Yaz) may have a higher risk of getting a blood clot," said a new Yaz label on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.

Syrian forces on Tuesday pounded protest hubs in apparent breach of a ceasefire deal brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who appealed for his plan to be implemented without preconditions.

Syria said it was abiding by the plan, but Annan accused Damascus of pulling troops from some areas and moving them to others, and the rebel Free Syrian Army warned it would resume attacks if the government offensive does not stop.

A powerful booby trap bomb killed one Philippine soldier and wounded 27 others as they patrolled a former stronghold of al-Qaida-linked militants on Tuesday, the military said.

The soldiers were patrolling the outskirts of a remote camp captured last month from Abu Sayyaf extremists when the device went off, local army commander Colonel Ricardo Visaya told Agence France Presse.

A top Iranian military commander on Tuesday denied a U.S. news report that the CIA has been successfully sending spy drones over Iran over the past three years.

"No unmanned or manned (surveillance) aircraft have entered Iran's air space" apart from one U.S. stealth drone that was captured last December, Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili of the Revolutionary Guards' air defense command told the official IRNA news agency.

At least 15 people were killed and 33 wounded in two suicide attacks targeting police and government offices in Afghanistan just hours apart on Tuesday, officials said.

Eleven people died and 28 were wounded when two suicide attackers rammed a car bomb into a government compound near the western city of Herat, the interior ministry said.