A Pakistani teenager who sacrificed his life to stop a suicide bomber, saving the lives of hundreds of students, has been handed the country's highest award for bravery.

Aitzaz Hassan, 15, a student in Hangu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has become a national hero after tackling the bomber who came to attack his school on Monday, with hundreds of students inside.

South Sudan's loyalist troops prepared Saturday for an offensive on the last major town held by rebels, a day after recapturing the country's main oil hub.

Meanwhile the United Nations urged President Salva Kiir to release detainees in a show of goodwill to kickstart stalled peace talks in Ethiopia.

French newspapers warned Saturday that President Francois Hollande's alleged affair with an actress risked overshadowing his much-anticipated announcement of a new tack in efforts to kindle growth and create jobs.

Whilst largely defending the unmarried Hollande's right to a private life, national and regional dailies admitted the hundreds of journalists at his bi-annual press conference on Tuesday will only have one question in mind.

A state of emergency was declared in parts of Tonga Saturday as powerful Cyclone Ian slammed into the South Pacific island nation, bringing winds estimated at 105 knots (200 kilometers per hour).

But residents and officials said the maximum category five cyclone, which had been forecast to bring gusts of up to 155 knots, caused surprisingly little damage.

Several Thai anti-government protesters were wounded after gunmen opened fire on a rally site in Bangkok, authorities said Saturday, as tensions rise ahead of a planned city-wide "shutdown" to heap more pressure on the caretaker government.

The kingdom is the grip of a political crisis that has led to parliament being dissolved amid mass protests to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and end the influence on Thai politics of her wildly divisive brother, Thaksin.

The United States has sent a handful of military advisers to Somalia in recent months to help bolster an African Union force fighting Islamist militants there, officials said Friday.

The deployment marks the first stationing of U.S. troops in the troubled country since 1993, when two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down and 18 Americans were killed in a disastrous operation.

A Mexican judge has ordered two Canadian women held for up to 40 days while prosecutors investigate the firebombing of a government office and car dealership, an official said Friday.

The women, both in their 20s, were placed under Mexico's system of "arraigo" detention on Thursday along with a Mexican man.

Britain's planned referendum on membership of the European Union passed its first hurdle in parliament's upper house on Friday, but lawmakers warned that the bill could be killed off by delays.

The bill -- which is backed by Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative party and guarantees a public vote on EU membership by 2017 -- passed the "second reading" stage unopposed in the House of Lords after a marathon seven-hour debate.

Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said the first phase of talks with the U.N. nuclear watchdog will be finished by early February, English-language Press TV website reported Friday.

Earlier on Friday, Iran and world powers agreed on how to implement a landmark November deal on containing Tehran's nuclear program, but it must still be approved by each country before it can take effect.

The White House on Friday declined to renew its previous prediction that a Senate bill slapping new sanctions on Iran, which it fears could scupper nuclear talks, would not pass the Senate.

President Barack Obama's spokesman Jay Carney warned however that the bill would be detrimental to the drive to resolve the nuclear showdown with Tehran short of war.