A deal signed by South Sudan's president aimed at ending 20 months of civil war was given a cautious welcome Thursday, with both sides in the conflict urged to show good faith.

At least seven ceasefires have already been agreed and then shattered within days or even hours in South Sudan, which broke away from Sudan in 2011.

Islamic State group fighters seized five villages from rebel forces in Syria's northern Aleppo province overnight and entered the outskirts of a key opposition bastion there, a monitor said Thursday.

The jihadist group seized three villages near the town of Marea and entered its southern outskirts, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Japan's leading toilet giant opens a new museum this week dedicated to a century of lavatories, from its first water flushing model to the most cutting edge version with odor-neutralizers and variable water jets.

The museum operated by TOTO -- best known for its bidet-equipped Washlet series -- opens its doors on Friday in the southwestern city of Kitakyushu, where the company is based.

Human Rights Watch on Thursday urged the Saudi-led coalition battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen to stop using cluster munitions, saying it had uncovered new evidence of their devastating impact.

The New York-based watchdog said dozens of civilians were killed or wounded in at least seven such apparent attacks in the northwestern province of Hajja between late April and mid-July.

Huang Yung-fu greets visitors to his village in central Taiwan with paint-stained hands and shoes spattered with flecks of colour, a sign of the daily artistic labour that has seen him single-handedly stave off the developers' bulldozers.

At 93 years old, the former soldier still gets up at 3am every day to spend four hours daubing the walls of the small settlement with colourful figures, from birds and animals to celebrity singers and sportsmen.

China's central bank on Thursday set its central rate for the yuan currency at a four-year low against the U.S. dollar, a move analysts said reflected reduced expectations for the unit following a devaluation.

The yuan was fixed at 6.4085 to the greenback, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System, just 0.07 percent weaker from the previous day. But it was the lowest since August 2011, the Shanghai Securities News said on its website.

A staffer at a Chinese finance company named Goldman Sachs said any similarity to the multi-billion-dollar U.S. investment giant was unintentional Thursday, weeks after a Chinese man was arrested for setting up a fake bank branch.

Goldman Sachs (Shenzhen) Financial Leasing Co., operating in the southern boomtown next to Hong Kong, has an almost identical name to New York-based financial institution, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Oil rose in Asia Thursday as dealers digested a mixed U.S. energy report showing a dip in crude inventories, but barely any decline in production despite sinking prices.

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate for October delivery gained 87 cents to $39.47 while Brent crude for October rose $1.01 to $44.15 in afternoon trade.

A man shot and killed a police officer in Louisiana and stabbed three women, one of them fatally on Wednesday, local media reported.

The victims of the attack in the town of Sunset, Louisiana included two sisters of the mayor of neighboring Grand Coteau.

A Cambodian court on Thursday sentenced five men to seven years in jail each for stealing a golden urn said to contain relics of Buddha after it was snatched from a mountain shrine.

The disappearance of the urn -- believed to contain hair, teeth and bones of Buddha -- and several small statues came to light in late 2013, sparking a nationwide manhunt in the Buddhist-majority country.