Russia on Friday expelled a Polish correspondent  in a tit-for-tat move after a Russian journalist was kicked out by Warsaw.

The Russian foreign ministry decided to "revoke the accreditation of Waclaw Radziwinowicz of Gazeta Wyborcza," spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Facebook page.

The world powers most implicated in Syria's civil war met Friday to renew efforts to bind Bashar Assad's regime and its rebel foes into a ceasefire and peace talks.

Convened by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, 17 foreign ministers gathered at a New York hotel.

Empowered by an effective fighting force on the ground, a newly-formed Kurdish-Arab alliance in Syria is working to position itself as a player in any future peace negotiations with Damascus.

Top international envoys gathered in New York on Friday to push towards a resolution to Syria's nearly five-year war and discuss the formation of an opposition delegation for talks with the regime. 

The U.S. House of Representatives Friday approved a $1.1 trillion spending package for 2016 which if passed by the Senate as expected would avert a government shutdown before year-end holidays.

The sprawling bipartisan compromise, which also tightens visa requirements, proposes reforms to the International Monetary Fund and lifts a longstanding ban on U.S. crude oil exports, passed easily by a vote of 316 to 113. 

British Prime Minister David Cameron strongly suggested Friday that he would hold his promised in-out referendum on EU membership in 2016 after securing a deal on his "Brexit" reform demands.

Cameron said after an EU summit in Brussels that his government aimed to achieve a breakthrough at the next summit in February in his drive to reform the 28-nation bloc, and then encourage British voters to remain inside.

Yemen rebels taking part in peace talks in Switzerland snubbed a meeting early Friday, a member of the opposing government delegation said, as a fragile ceasefire appeared to be crumbling on the ground.

"A meeting was scheduled this morning. We waited for them and they did not show up," said a member of the delegation representing Yemen's government at the U.N.-sponsored talks in the small northwestern town of Magglingen.

Turkey and Israel are nearing agreement on a deal to normalize ties after positive progress was made on Ankara's key demands in closed-door negotiations, a Turkish official said on Friday.

Israeli officials had the day earlier revealed that Israel and Turkey in secret talks in Switzerland had reached "understandings" to normalize ties that were downgraded following the deadly 2010 Israeli commando raid on a Turkish aid ship headed for the Gaza Strip.

Two Serbian embassy staffers abducted in Libya last month are alive but Belgrade has not received any demands for their release, an official said Friday.

The pair were kidnapped on November 8 in the coastal city of Sabratha, 70 kilometers (42 miles) west of Tripoli, from a convoy of cars heading to the Tunisian border.

Parliamentarians from India's right-wing government on Friday blocked a private member's bill to decriminalize gay sex, in a setback for sexual freedom in the world's biggest democracy.

Shashi Tharoor, a lawmaker from the opposition Congress party, sought to table a bill to amend section 377 of the Indian penal code, which bans homosexual acts as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature". 

The United Nations peacekeeping chief in Mali is to be replaced after just one year in the role, diplomatic sources said on Friday, amid criticism of the country's peace process.

Former Chadian foreign minister Mahamat Saleh Annadif takes over from Tunisian Mongi Hamdi in January, a source in the incumbent's office told AFP.