At least 16 people were killed and dozens injured in a suspected suicide blast targeting Shiites in the southern Pakistani city of Jacobabad Friday, the top local official said.

The attack came with Pakistan on high alert for the mourning days of Ashura, during the holy month of Moharram, a flashpoint for sectarian violence in previous years. 

A Turkish court on Friday sentenced 244 people to up to 14 months behind bars for taking part in mass protests in 2013 that rocked the ruling Islamic-rooted conservative party.

Some 255 protesters, including seven foreigners, had faced a range of charges including damaging a place of worship, protecting criminals, injuring civil servants and hijacking public transport vehicles.

The number of Democrats vying for the White House narrowed to three Friday, after former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee dropped out of the race.

His website, chafee2016.com, released the transcript of a speech he delivered Friday announcing that he was ending his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Pro-Russian insurgents in Ukraine's eastern separatist Donetsk region said Friday they had banned Doctors Without Borders (MSF) from working in the area for unspecified violations of local laws.

In late September, the Geneva-based Nobel Peace Prize laureate and  nine other non-governmental relief groups were kicked out of the neighboring rebel province of Lugansk.

A shooting linked to a dispute over a dice game has left one person dead and three others injured at Tennessee State University, police said Friday.

A pistol was recovered at the scene but no arrests have been made.

A young Pakistani woman was recovering in hospital Friday after she was burned over nearly half her body by a man she had refused to marry, police said.

Sonia Bibi, 20, told police from her hospital bed that her former lover Latif Ahmed sprinkled her with petrol and set her alight after she turned down his proposal.  

British police arrested a survivor of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and raided his home after he stepped out in front of Chinese President Xi Jinping's motorcade, police and campaigners said Friday.

Shao Jiang could be seen being dragged away by several police officers after he breached a security barrier and stood alone in front of the cars on Wednesday in footage aired on Channel 4 television.

South African police on Friday fired rubber bullets and tear gas at students protesting outside government headquarters over hikes to university fees that President Jacob Zuma was forced to scrap after days of unrest.

Some demonstrators tried to force their way towards the Union Buildings in the capital Pretoria, tearing down a security fence, setting fire to portable toilets and hurling bricks at police lines in chaotic scenes.

More than 1,300 migrants were moved out of a disused Paris school on Friday, the last major camp in the French capital and where they had spent months in increasingly rough conditions.

Police transported the group from the school in a fleet of buses early in the morning, according to AFP journalists at the scene, taking them to hostels and special accommodation around Paris.

Slovenia says it is considering building a border fence to help stem a record influx of migrants and refugees, as thousands more people arrived from Croatia on Friday.

The small Alpine nation has become the main entry point into the European Union's passport-free Schengen zone after Hungary sealed its southern borders with razor-wire fences to stop migrants desperately trying to reach northern Europe before winter sets in.