Turkey's government launched an attack on social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook on Friday, saying they had been used as a tool for "chaos and disorder" during the country's recent unrest.

"Yes to the Internet ... but an absolute no to its misuse as a tool for crimes, violence, chaos and disorder," Turkey's Transportation and Communications Minister Binali Yildirim was quoted as saying by the local Dogan news agency.

Raids by gunmen in ethnically divided central Nigeria and gun battles between soldiers and attackers have killed at least 48 people and left dozens of homes burnt, the military said Friday.

The attacks appeared to have been reprisals linked to cattle theft, often the source of friction in the Middle Belt region dividing the mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south of Africa's most populous nation.

A policeman has been charged with trafficking after a Rohingya woman was allegedly lured from a shelter in southern Thailand and subsequently raped by a man from the refugee Muslim minority, police told AFP Friday.

It is believed to be the first time a Thai official has been charged with trafficking of Rohingya boat people, despite probes into alleged people smuggling by authorities including the army.

A priest has been arrested on suspicion of fraud and corruption in connection with the sweeping probe of the scandal-plagued Vatican bank, Italian media reported Friday.

Nunzio Scarano, a priest from Salerno, was arrested after an investigation into the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), as the bank is known, unearthed a suspected international fraud scheme, reports said.

Serbia's ambitions to join the European Union were the focus of the second and final day of an EU summit here Friday, with talks with the prospective member set to begin no later than January.

Leaders of the 27-nation bloc had worked into the early hours to stop Britain from throwing a spanner in the works to a tentative deal reached earlier on the EU's next trillion-euro budget.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro reiterated late Thursday his offer to grant asylum to fugitive U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, whom he praised as a "brave youth."

"If that young man needs humanitarian protection and believes that he can come to Venezuela," then Venezuela "is prepared to protect this brave youth in a humanitarian way and so that humanity can learn the truth," and his ordeal can end, Maduro said.

A former high-ranking U.S. military officer is being probed for allegedly leaking details about a U.S. cyberattack on Iran, a U.S. media report said Thursday.

Citing unnamed legal sources, NBC News said retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright has been told he is under investigation for allegedly disclosing details about the Stuxnet attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Turkish police have fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters in the capital Ankara, leading to four arrests, local media and witnesses said Friday.

Police stepped in to break up the protest late Thursday in the Dikmen residential area of the capital, scene of clashes between demonstrators and police for the past few weeks.

A suspected knifeman who attacked three elementary school children in broad daylight on a Tokyo street was being held by police on Friday after a rare incidence of violence in low-crime Japan, reports said.

The three children -- two six years old and one seven years old -- received cuts during the attack outside their school in the northwest of the capital around 2:00 pm (05:00 GMT), Japan's public broadcaster NHK said.

China on Friday labeled riots in restive Xinjiang as "a violent terrorist attack" after state media said the death roll rose to 35 and authorities tightened control ahead of the anniversary of 2009 clashes.

Wednesday's violence in the western desert region, which is home to 10 million mostly Uighur Muslims, were the worst to hit the resource-rich province since riots on July 5, 2009, left hundreds dead.