A U.S. diplomat accused by the Russians of being a CIA spy after they caught him allegedly trying to recruit agents last week left the country on Sunday, Russian television reported.

Ryan Fogle flew out of Moscow, Russia's NTV state television channel said, broadcasting pictures showing him at Sheremetyevo International Airport.

Myanmar President Thein Sein began Saturday the first visit to Washington by a leader of his country in nearly 50 years as the United States throws its support behind his reforms.

The former general, who initiated a wave of reforms after taking office in 2011, flew into Washington and was holding a weekend of private meetings before talks at the White House on Monday, people involved in the trip said.

Activists demanding the closure of Guantanamo prison marked the 100th day of a hunger strike there Friday by submitting a petition to the White House containing some 370,000 signatures.

A group of activists wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods like those used on detainees at Guantanamo Bay gathered outside the White House to call for the immediate closure of the controversial jail.

Myanmar released about 20 political prisoners on Friday, a top official said, hours before its reform-minded leader was due to leave on a landmark visit to the United States to meet President Barack Obama.

President Thein Sein, a former general, has freed hundreds of political detainees since coming to power in early 2011 as part of sweeping changes that have led to the end of most Western sanctions.

President Thein Sein's historic invitation to the White House is an endorsement of "Myanmar's Spring" and a further sign that the former pariah's reforms are irreversible, a senior Myanmar official said.

Washington will welcome the former general on Monday in a hugely symbolic reward for sweeping changes since he took power two years ago. He will be the first leader of the former military-ruled nation to visit since 1966.

North Korea is now thought to have around twice as many mobile missile launchers as previously estimated by Seoul, a report said

Friday, quoting a state-run military analysis unit.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon stressed on Thursday that his country will not permit the transfer of weapons" from Syria to Hizbullah.”

Yaalon's statement came during talks he held with Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan, who arrived in Israel late on Thursday on a surprise visit to discuss the situation in Syria, an official Israeli source said.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to crank up pressure on Syria's President Bashar Assad Thursday, but offered no concrete new measures to do so.

Obama warned there was no "magic formula" to force Assad to leave power, as both the United States and Turkey want, but said he hoped a conference that Washington is organizing with Russia next month would be successful.

An al-Qaida-linked cell broken up in Egypt at the weekend planned to bomb the U.S. and French embassies in Cairo, state news agency MENA quoted investigators as saying on Wednesday.

"The accused planned suicide car bombings outside the embassies of France and the United States in Egypt," MENA said

U.S. officials Wednesday slammed a campaign of "unrelenting repression" ahead of Iran's presidential elections, and said the outcome would be very hard to predict amid a secret vetting process.

The future direction the next Iranian leadership will take in ongoing talks with world powers about the Islamic republic's suspect nuclear program was also difficult to predict, top U.S. administration officials told U.S. lawmakers.