Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday hit back at critics who wrote an open letter published in British daily The Times blasting his handling of the civil unrest which engulfed Turkey last month.

"Treating our government as 'dictatorial' only shows impertinence...," Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul, referring to the letter.

Togo's ruling party has taken the lead in the country's parliamentary elections, partial results showed Friday, while an opposition coalition was ahead in the capital Lome.

Thursday's long-delayed polls came after months of protests in the West African nation, with the opposition seeking to weaken the ruling family's decades-long grip on power.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday proposed top-level talks with China involving either leaders or foreign ministers, adding they should be held soon and without preconditions.

Speaking during a visit to Singapore, Abe said ties between the neighbors are "mutually beneficial" and should be restored to normalcy.

The United States will not seek the death penalty for fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, according to a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder obtained by Agence France Presse Friday.

Holder said in the letter addressed to his Russian counterpart that "the charges he faces do not carry that possibility, and the United States would not seek the death penalty even if Mr. Snowden were charged with additional, death penalty-eligible crimes."

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn will face trial on pimping charges along with 12 others in connection with an alleged prostitution ring in the French city of Lille, prosecutors said Friday.

Strauss-Kahn was charged last year with "aggravated pimping as part of an organised gang", in one of a string of cases that came to light after he was forced to resign from his IMF job over an alleged sexual assault on a New York hotel maid.

Edward Snowden's father came out swinging in support of his fugitive son Friday, saying the intelligence leaker did "what he knew was right."

The former National Security Agency contractor has been holed up in a Moscow airport for weeks after revealing secret details on vast U.S. surveillance programs, sparking an uproar both at home and abroad.

Spanish police on Friday announced they have formally detained the driver of a fast-moving train that flew off the tracks, killing at least 78 people, saying he was suspected of "recklessness".

"He has been detained since 8:00 pm (Thursday). He is accused of crimes related to the accident," Jaime Iglesias, the police chief in the northwestern region of Galicia where the accident happened, told reporters.

Foreign nuclear experts on Friday blasted the operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, with one saying its lack of transparency over radioactive water leaks showed "you don't know what you're doing".

The blunt criticism comes after a litany of problems at the reactor site, which was swamped by a tsunami two years ago. The disaster sent reactors into meltdown and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents in the worst atomic accident in a generation.

A 6.2-magnitude quake hit off the South Pacific island of Vanuatu on Friday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but it was not expected to generate a tsunami.

The US Geological Survey said the tremor at 0707 GMT was 135 kilometers (84 miles) deep and some 48 kilometers northeast of Luganville, and more than 270 kilometers from the capital Port Vila.

Pakistan's main opposition party announced Friday it would boycott next week's election for a ceremonial head of state to protest against the manner in which the vote was brought forward.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the ballot would be held on July 30 instead of August 6 after the main ruling party complained that the original date clashed with the end of Ramadan.