The United States believes Iran was behind a major cyberattack on Saudi Arabia's state oil company and a Qatari gas firm, a former U.S. official who has worked on cybersecurity issues said Friday.

In a major cybersecurity speech on Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a veiled warning to Tehran that Washington is ready to take preemptive action to protect U.S. computer networks, the former official said.

Bombers targeted the car of a senior Libyan police officer in the country's second city Benghazi on Saturday, without causing casualties, a security official in the eastern city told Agence France Presse.

"The car of Colonel Mohammed bin Halim, chief of police operations in Benghazi, exploded outside his home. No one was hurt," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

China said Saturday the failure by Washington and Tokyo to fix their fiscal problems was hurting the global economy, as it called for "bold, swift and decisive action" to reverse a slowdown.

Deputy central bank governor Yi Gang warned the absence of a "credible, medium-term fiscal consolidation in some of the major advanced economies such as the United States and Japan" is unsettling for the world economy.

A U.S. federal court sentenced a Lebanese man to 12 years in prison Thursday for conspiring to provide Colombia's leftist FARC rebels with military-grade weapons in exchange for over a ton of cocaine.

Jamal Youssef, 54, pleaded guilty in May to one count of providing material support to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America's oldest insurgent group.

British radical Islamic preacher Abu Hamza pleaded not guilty in a U.S. court on Tuesday to 11 terror charges, including conspiring to set up an al-Qaida-style training camp on American soil.

The one-eyed, handless 54-year-old appeared in Manhattan federal court without his trademark prosthetic hook that he wears on one arm and which was removed by U.S. authorities after he was extradited from Britain last week.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday described North Korea's boast that it has missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland as "alarming" and warned it would increase tension in the region.

Ban, a former foreign minister of South Korea, admitted he had no way of knowing if the claim issued by North Korea earlier on Tuesday was credible.

Serge Haroche of France and David Wineland of the U.S. won the Nobel Prize on Tuesday for work in quantum physics that could one day open the way to revolutionary computers.

The pair were honored for pioneering optical experiments in "measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems," the Nobel Physics jury said in its citation.

North Korea said Tuesday it possessed "strategic rocket forces" capable of striking the U.S. mainland, as it responded to a new U.S.-South Korean deal to extend the range of the South's missile systems.

In a series of bulletins released on the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the spokesman of the National Defense Commission also said Pyongyang was ready to match any enemy, "nuclear for nuclear, missile for missile".

President Barack Obama lost a five-point lead after last week's debate with Republican rival Mitt Romney, with the two candidates polling even in the three days afterwards, a Gallup poll out Monday has found.

The poll was an early measure of the damage done by Obama's lackluster performance against a more aggressive and energetic Romney, who had been slipping in the days before the nationally televised encounter in Denver.

Barack Obama has "failed to lead" in the Middle East and the strained ties between his White House and Israel have emboldened Iran, presidential challenger Mitt Romney declared Monday.

In a major foreign policy speech, Romney warned the president's dithering had increased instability in a region clamoring for U.S. leadership and left both the United States and its Middle East allies less safe than they were.