A total of 15 people died in an "attack" in China's Xinjiang region on Friday, with eight "terrorists" shot dead by police and three blowing themselves up, having killed four people, authorities said.

The incident in Aksu prefecture is the latest violence in the restive region home to mostly Muslim ethnic Uighurs.

Amnesty International condemned Indonesia's parliament Friday for "dragging its feet" on the protection of domestic workers, despite the recent brutal abuse of an Indonesian maid in Hong Kong.

The rights organization called on Indonesia's parliament to pass a bill on the protection of domestic workers that was drafted in 2010 before the legislative's term expires in September, saying it was "shameful" the bill had been ignored.

India's normally disruptive parliament was widely derided on Friday as having hit a new low after lawmakers fought, broke equipment and pepper-sprayed the chamber over a bill to create a new state.

India's media condemned the lawmakers' behavior as "revolting" and a "disgrace to democracy" after mayhem erupted on Thursday over the bill to carve a new state out of existing Andhra Pradesh.

The U.N. children's agency on Friday said it was horrified at how children are being maimed and killed, including by beheadings, in the sectarian violence engulfing the Central African Republic.

"There is no future for a country where adults can viciously target innocent children with impunity," said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF regional director for west and central Africa.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday rebuked the European Union for trying to extend its "sphere of influence" amid deteriorating relations over the political crisis in Kiev.

"Pressuring Ukraine in one direction, while warning that it faces an 'either-or' choice -- either the EU or Russia -- is essentially trying to create a sphere of influence," Lavrov said at a press conference with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is on a two-day visit to Moscow.

France is to hold a meeting of its top defense committee Friday on the Central African Republic and later host Chad's President Idriss Deby, the French presidency said.

The meeting of the limited defense committee -- which includes President Francois Hollande and top ministers -- is to take place at 1000 GMT and Hollande will then hold talks with Deby, who has a powerful influence over events in the CAR, in Paris at 1700 GMT.

A Taiwanese military intelligence officer who went AWOL and unsuccessfully sought political asylum in Britain was indicted Friday on desertion charges, prosecutors said.

Yeh Mei, a 33-year-old lieutenant with the Military Intelligence Agency, had been put on Taiwan's wanted list after failing to return for duty following an overseas trip in 2012.

A Chinese province admitted on Friday running unlawful "discipline centers" to detain petitioners -- months after the country abolished labor camps often used to lock them up.

For generations ordinary Chinese people unable to find redress for grievances have petitioned higher-level governments, all the way up to Beijing.

A snow storm hit Japan on Friday, disrupting rail and road travel, grounding more than 100 flights and adding to the piles left behind by an earlier blanketing.

Up to 30 centimeters (12 inches) of snow was forecast for some parts of the country by Saturday morning, a week after the heaviest snowfall in decades left at least 11 people dead and more than 1,200 injured.

Recent satellite imagery suggests North Korea has stepped up excavation work at its main nuclear test site, but there are no signs of an imminent test, a U.S. think-tank said Friday.

The images indicate a "significant acceleration in excavation activity" at the remote Punggye-ri test site in the northeast, said the closely-followed 38 North website of the Johns Hopkins University's U.S.-Korea Institute.