US President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin were Thursday set to argue out their differences on the Syria crisis over dinner at the G20 in Russia as world leaders sought to overcome a deep chasm over a US-led push for military action.

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on Wednesday pledged to unite Mali as he was sworn in to lead the deeply-divided west African nation’s emergence from months of political crisis and conflict.

Egypt’s interior minister escaped an assassination attempt yesterday when a suspected car bomb struck his convoy in a Cairo neighborhood, in the first attack on a senior government official since the country’s Islamist president was toppled in a coup two months ago.