South Sudan President Salva Kiir said Wednesday he is willing to hold talks with his arch-rival former deputy he accuses of leading a coup bid against him.

Kiir has accused soldiers loyal to Riek Machar of staging a coup attempt in the oil-rich but deeply impoverished nation, which has struggled with instability since becoming independent in 2011.

India has transferred a diplomat at the center of a political row with the United States to its U.N. mission in New York to give her full diplomatic immunity, local media reported Wednesday.

The transfer of deputy consular general Devyani Khobragade to the United Nations Permanent Mission came after Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid pledged to "restore the dignity" of the diplomat who was strip-searched during her 48-hour detention in New York last week.

Britain is temporarily withdrawing some UK-based staff from its embassy in South Sudan because of the deadly unrest in the capital Juba, the Foreign Office said Wednesday.

It also advised Britons not to travel to Juba and the neighboring area, and said those who were already there should stay at home.

Pope Francis told members of his favorite Buenos Aires football team on Wednesday that he would visit his native Argentina in 2016 for the 200th anniversary of its independence and a religious congress.

"He said that in 2016 he will go to Argentina," Marcelo Tinelli, vice president of the club, San Lorenzo, told reporters after meeting the pope with other managers and players from the Buenos Aires team.

Britain said Wednesday it would rush through legislation banning EU migrants from claiming unemployment handouts from the moment they arrive, ahead of the January 1 lifting of restrictions on the entry of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals.

Migrants from all European Union states will have to wait three months before applying for out-of-work handouts and other benefits.

Russian lawmakers on Wednesday approved a Kremlin-backed amnesty bill that is set to free the two jailed members of the punk band Pussy Riot while also ending the prosecution of 30 Greenpeace crew members.

Russia's Duma lower house of parliament voted 446 in favor to none against for the amnesty, which commemorates 20 years since Russia ratified its current constitution.

The Philippine military and one of Asia's last communist guerrilla groups said Wednesday they are to call an informal truce over Christmas, bringing some peace to a nation reeling from disasters.

The Communist Party of the Philippines said its New People's Army guerrillas would observe a 48-hour unilateral ceasefire in the mainly Catholic Asian nation from December 24, and another 48-hour truce from New Year's Eve.

The European Commission on Wednesday said it had opened "an in-depth investigation" to see whether plans by the British government to subsidize a new nuclear plant comply with EU state aid rules.

"The Commission has doubts that the project suffers from a genuine market failure," it said in a statement.

Media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Wednesday 71 journalists were killed in 2013, a slight fall from the previous year, but there was a surge in kidnappings.

"Syria, Somalia and Pakistan retained their position among the world's five deadliest countries for the media," the Paris-based watchdog said in its annual round-up of press freedom violations.

Disasters including the floods that struck central Europe in June caused global economic losses of about $130 billion in 2013, reinsurer Swiss Re said on Wednesday.

The insurance industry is likely to cover about $44 billion (32 billion euros) of all losses from such catastrophes, the company said, noting that the figure was substantially lower than the $81 billion seen in 2012, when Superstorm Sandy battered the United States.