Defenders and critics locked horns Sunday over last week's release of a U.S. report that aired harrowing new details of America's torture of "war on terror" detainees, and opened fresh political wounds.

The U.S. Senate report released Tuesday said the CIA's interrogation of al-Qaida suspects, including beatings, rectal rehydration, and sleep deprivation, was far more brutal than acknowledged -- and did not produce useful intelligence.

Egypt said Sunday the reason it had barred U.S. scholar and prominent regime critic Michele Dunne from entering the country a day earlier was because she did not have a proper visa.

Former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday defended America's now-banned program that tortured al-Qaida suspects, praising the CIA operatives who ran it as heroes.

"I'm perfectly comfortable that they should be praised, they should be decorated," the right-hand man to former president George W. Bush told NBC television's "Meet the Press" program, adding, "I'd do it again in a minute."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected talk of Israel withdrawing from east Jerusalem and the West Bank within two years, on the eve of a meeting with the top U.S. diplomat.

"We... stand against the possibility of a diplomatic assault, that is an attempt to compel us by means of U.N. decisions to withdraw to the 1967 lines within two years," said Netanyahu.

Nobel peace prize winners on Sunday expressed deep concern about the growing threat of conflict, including nuclear war, and "a new and more dangerous Cold War."

A parliamentary committee investigating possible British links to torture will request access to blacked out parts of a U.S. Senate report on CIA treatment of al-Qaida suspects, its chairman said Sunday.

The news comes amid growing questions in Britain about whether its intelligence services made use of information extracted by the CIA using brutal and unauthorised tactics in the years after the 9/11 attacks.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday called for Muslim clerics and tribal elders to help stem a surge in deadly insurgent attacks that have rocked the country as US-led troops end their war against the Taliban.

Afghanistan has been hit by weeks of regular attacks, with at least 12 suicide bombs in Kabul alone in the last month.

The U.S. Congress on Saturday unanimously approved fresh economic sanctions against Russia and lethal weapons for Kiev, defying President Barack Obama and hardening American lawmakers' response to a Kremlin-backed insurgency in Ukraine.

Identical texts of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act passed both the Senate and House of Representatives on Thursday, but because of a technical issue it returned to the Senate where it passed by unanimous consent moments before the chamber adjourned late Saturday night.

At least 25,000 protesters paralyzed parts of New York and thousands more marched in Washington on Saturday, stepping up demonstrations across the United States demanding justice for black men killed by white police.

The rallies in the capital, New York, Boston and in several Californian cities were among the largest in a growing protest movement sparked by the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9.

A man was shot dead Saturday during a new round of anti-government protests in the Haitian capital calling for the president and prime minister to resign.

Clashes broke out when hundreds of youth tried to break through police barricades to enter the presidential palace.