Tropical Storm Irene gained strength as it passed over Puerto Rico early Monday and was officially declared a hurricane, U.S. government forecasters said.

The hurricane, whose eye was located 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of San Juan, now packed sustained winds of 125 kilometers an hour, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center announced.

The mayor of a Russian town just outside Moscow was shot dead Monday in a possible contract killing, investigators said.

Yevgeny Dushko, mayor of Sergiyev Posad, a town of 105,000 people some 60 kilometers north of the capital, was leaving his apartment building at 7:30 am (03:30 GMT) when an unidentified gunman shot him twice, the Investigative Committee said.

Two strong blasts tore through a supermarket in Russia's volatile Caucasus region of Dagestan, injuring 15 people including three children, regional police said on Monday.

The first blast went off late Sunday and wounded a sales clerk, the regional interior ministry said in a statement. The second struck when a Russian security team arrived on the scene.

North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong Il on Monday swept through Siberia aboard his special armoured train to the city of Ulan-Ude for talks with President Dmitry Medvedev later this week.

Kim is widely expected to meet Medvedev for a rare summit, possibly Tuesday or Wednesday.

Taiwan plans to develop a long-distance precision-guided missile which would be able to strike military bases along China's southeastern coastline in the event of war, a legislator said Monday.

Taiwan's defense ministry has budgeted Tw$30 million ($1.04 million) for developments including the design of the missile bases and safety systems, said Lin Yu-fang, a lawmaker who sits on the national defense committee.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday she was "deeply disappointed" over the eight-year prison sentence given to two Americans who have said they had strayed unwittingly into Iran.

"We are deeply disappointed that Iranian judicial authorities have sentenced Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal to eight years in prison," Clinton said.

Russia has put forward "proposals" to build new nuclear power plants in Iran after the completion of the Bushehr project, local media reported Sunday quoting the Islamic republic's atomic chief.

"We have held negotiations with the Russians regarding the construction of new nuclear power plants. They have put forward some proposals," Fereydoon Abbasi Davani was quoted as saying by Resalat newspaper.

Tehran's prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi on Sunday confirmed that Iran has sentenced two American hikers to eight years in prison each, the ISNA news agency reported.

"Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal have been each sentenced to eight years in jail by the branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court," ISNA quoted him as telling a news conference. He said the verdict can be appealed in 20 days.

An Al-Qaida suspect plotted to poison tourists' water supplies to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden, a Spanish judge said Saturday as he remanded the man in custody.

Abdellatif Aoulad Chiba, a 36-year-old Moroccan, had gone so far as to obtain manuals on poisons, toxins and explosives on jihadist websites, the judge said.

Afghanistan's election commission on Sunday threw nine lawmakers out of parliament in a bid to settle nearly a year of disputes over fraud-tainted elections that have paralyzed the lower house.

Although President Hamid Karzai tasked the Independent Election Commission (IEC) with making a final ruling, it was not immediately clear whether its decision would finally end the row or run the risk of more angry protests.