At least 10 people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on August 30 when a car bomb claimed by al Shabaab exploded outside the Presidential Palace and also damaged two nearby hotels, an official said.

The Obama administration will meet its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year a month ahead of schedule and is working with Congress to increase the target by a few thousand in 2018, the White House said on August 29.

A suicide bomber killed at least 54 people when he drove a car bomb into a militia compound in Aden on August 29, the health ministry said, in one of the deadliest attacks claimed by Islamic State in the southern Yemeni port city.

An expected explosion in US tourism to Cuba will likely take years to materialize even after US airlines resume commercial flights to the Caribbean island this week for the first time since 1961, industry official said.

US President Barack Obama will have a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan during the G20 summit in China next month and is likely to have at least an informal talk with Russia's Vladimir Putin, the White House said on August 29.

About 1,100 migrants were rescued from boats in the Strait of Sicily on August 28 as they tried to reach Europe, Italy's coastguard said.

Turkey's army and its allies thrust deeper into Syria on August 28, seizing territory controlled by Kurdish-aligned forces on the fifth day of a cross-border campaign that a monitoring group said had killed at least 35 villagers.

At least 34 Libyan fighters were killed and more than 180 wounded on August 28 as they closed in on the last Islamic State militant holdouts in the coastal city of Sirte, according to field hospitals.

Singapore has confirmed its first case of a locally-transmitted Zika virus, which has been linked to microcephaly, a rare birth defect, in Brazil, the health ministry said on August 27.

Rebels supported by Turkey fought Kurdish-backed forces in northern Syria on August 27, as Ankara ratcheted up its cross-border offensive by saying it had launched air strikes against both Kurdish forces and Islamic State.