Pretoria on Friday criticized a U.S. decision to prioritize white South Africans as refugees accepted into the country, saying it was based on "widely discredited" claims of their persecution.

The U.N. and Red Cross voiced alarm Friday at alarming details of executions, gang rapes and abductions as Sudan's western city of El-Fasher fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Embassies in Mali urged citizens to depart the country immediately this week while the United States and United Kingdom withdrew non-essential staff, as a fuel blockade by jihadists upturns daily life and stokes fears of growing insecurity.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to extend a temporary ceasefire and will hold another round of peace talks in Istanbul next week, aiming to defuse tensions after a deadly flare-up this month.

A massive police raid on a drug gang embedded in low-income neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro that left at least 119 people dead drew protests for excessive force Wednesday and calls for the Rio's governor to resign.

Dozens of favelas residents gathered in front of the state's government headquarters shouting "assassins!" and waving Brazilian flags stained with red paint, a day after Rio's deadliest raid and hours after families and residents laid dozens of dead bodies on a street in one of the targeted communities to show the magnitude of the operation.

Sudan's paramilitary forces killed hundreds of people at a hospital, including patients, after they seized the provincial capital of North Darfur over the weekend, according to the U.N., displaced residents and aid workers, who described harrowing details of the atrocities.

The 460 patients and their companions were reportedly killed Tuesday at Saudi Hospital by fighters from the Rapid Support Forces in the city of el-Fasher, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization.

The United States will share closely held technology to allow South Korea to build a nuclear-powered submarine, President Donald Trump said on social media Thursday after meeting with the country's president.

The latest in a sustained Russian campaign of massive drone and missile attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure brought power outages and restrictions in all the country's regions Thursday, officials said, with the Ukrainian prime minister describing Moscow's tactic as "systematic energy terror."

The strikes, which were the latest in Russia's almost daily attacks on the Ukrainian power grid as bitter winter temperatures approach, killed at least two people and injured 17, including children between 2 and 16 years of age, according to authorities.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are expected to resume peace talks in Istanbul to revive a dialogue that collapsed earlier this week, Pakistan's defense minister and state media in both countries said Thursday.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday it was appalled at reports of more than 460 people being killed at a hospital in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, recently taken over by paramilitaries.