NAIROBI, Kenya — Suspected thieves tried to break into the home of Barack Obama's elderly step-grandmother in Kenya, the U.S. presidential candidate's uncle said Thursday.

The suspects did not manage to enter the house where Sarah Obama lives in the western Kenya village of Kogelo, according to Said Obama, the candidate's uncle.

The Democratic senator was born in Hawaii, where he spent most of his childhood raised by his mother, a white American from Kansas. He barely knew his late father, a Kenyan economist from Kogelo.

The candidate's Kenyan relatives have tried to keep a low profile and have been reluctant to comment on their security in Kogelo, more than 300 miles (485 kilometers) from the capital, Nairobi.

The Illinois senator is wildly popular in Kenya, where minibuses are emblazoned with his picture and vendors sell T-shirts bearing his image at traffic lights.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Two Russian strategic bombers landed in Venezuela on Wednesday as part of military maneuvers, President Hugo Chavez said, welcoming the unprecedented deployment at a time of increasing tensions between Moscow and the U.S.The Venezuelan leader said the two Russian Tu-160 bombers will conduct maneuvers and that he hopes to "fly one of those things" himself.Russian military analysts said it was the first time Russian strategic bombers have landed in the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War. The provocative foray into Venezuela was certain to add to the strain in U.S.-Russian relations created over Russia's war in Georgia.Chavez called the deployment part of a move toward a "pluri-polar world" — a reference to moving away from U.S. dominance.