Suspected Taliban militants shot dead two soldiers and injured seven others Monday in an audacious attack inside the Afghan defense ministry which the militia said was aimed at France's defense minister.

A suicide bomber wearing army uniform was killed inside the building before he could detonate, the ministry's spokesman said following the assault which struck at the heart of the embattled Kabul government.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged full support for quake-hit Japan on Sunday as the operator of its stricken nuclear plant said it expects to achieve "cold shutdown" in six to nine months.

Japan's embattled Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) offered the timeline more than five weeks after a giant quake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has since leaked radiation into the air, soil and sea.

Silvio Berlusconi will seek reelection in 2013, Justice Minister Angelo Alfano -- the man recently identified as the Italian prime minister's political heir -- said Saturday.

At a private dinner with foreign journalists on Tuesday, Berlusconi, 74, told reporters off the record that he would not contest the next election, and named Alfano as a possible successor, according to a press leak.

Vicious storms smacked the Deep South and toppled trees like dominoes as tornadoes howled through towns, tossing a mobile home in Alabama nearly a quarter of a mile across a state highway, killing the man inside.

Combined with fatalities in Arkansas and Oklahoma, the death toll had risen to 10 by early Saturday — the deadliest storm of the season so far.

Five international troops and four Afghan soldiers died in a suicide attack claimed by the Taliban at the Afghan army's headquarters in the war-torn country's east, officials said.

The attack is the worst single incident since December against foreign forces in Afghanistan, and comes amid a wave of suicide attacks on security targets, three months before foreign forces are to start a limited pullback.

A strong earthquake of magnitude 5.8 hit central Japan on Saturday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake shook buildings 83 kilometers north Tokyo and at a depth of 20 kilometers, the USGS stated.

Calm returned Friday to several towns in Uganda affected by clashes between police and opposition supporters that left 57 people injured, officials said.

Opposition supporters were protesting a rise in the cost of living and what they say is bad governance by President Yoweri Museveni.

At least 17 people were wounded in a suspected suicide bomb attack during Friday prayers at a mosque in a police compound in Indonesia's West Java province, police said.

"We suspect it was a suicide bombing," Indonesian police spokesman Anton Bachrul Alam said.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is unlikely to seek reelection at the next elections in 2013 and has named a possible successor as incumbent Justice Minister Angelo Alfano.

During a private dinner on Tuesday evening with foreign journalists, Berlusconi, 74, told reporters off the record that he would not be standing as a candidate in the next elections -- news that was then leaked by the press.

U.S. drones on Wednesday resumed missile attacks in Pakistan for the first time in a month, killing six fighters from the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network on the Afghan border, officials said.

Unmanned aircraft fired four missiles into a vehicle travelling through the South Waziristan district, targeting a common root for Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants who infiltrate Afghanistan to attack U.S. troops.