South Africa's president is calling for restraint after reports of violence and intimidation against foreigners.

Resentment against foreigners has sometimes turned deadly amid accusations that they take jobs from locals in a country where unemployment is high. In 2015, anti-immigrant riots in and around the city of Durban killed at least six people. In 2008, similar violence killed about 60 people.

Elite Iraqi forces on Friday entered a west Mosul neighbourhood for the first time since the start four months ago of an offensive to retake the city, a commander said.

Sami al-Aridhi, a lieutenant general in the Counter-Terrorism Service, said his men had retaken a military base and a village southwest of Mosul and entered a residential neighbourhood of the city.

An oil industry services company will pay $9.5 million in penalties for Gulf of Mexico safety violations and for pollution from a 2012 offshore platform fire that killed three workers.

The penalties against Houston-based Wood Group PSN were announced Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department in Washington and U.S. attorneys in New Orleans and Lafayette, Louisiana, where civil and criminal cases have been playing out. The penalties followed plea agreements.

Egyptians are bearing down under their worst inflation in a decade, cutting spending as much as possible as prices surge on basic food items, transport, housing, and even some essential medicines.

Inflation reached almost 30 percent in January, up five percent over the previous month, driven by the floatation of the Egyptian pound and slashing of fuel subsidies enacted by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in November.

Israel will stop issuing work visas to Human Rights Watch staff, the NGO said Friday, with the Jewish state accusing the group of being "fundamentally biased" against it.

The New York-based watchdog, which has written critical reports about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, applied months ago for a visa for its Israel and Palestine director, American citizen Omar Shakir.

A Washington-based lawyer for a Lebanese citizen and U.S. permanent resident imprisoned in Iran has described him as a "hostage."

Long before they were called selfies, Karl Baden snapped a simple black and white photo of himself. Then he repeated it, every day, for the next three decades.

Baden's "Every Day" project officially turns 30 on Thursday and he says he has no intention of stopping. The stark contemplation on mortality and aging has prompted some to dub the Boston College professor the unwitting "father of the selfie."

Every Sunday, the gymnasium along Beirut's airport highway echoes with the shouting and laughter of dozens of Syrian children enjoying a rare escape from a grim and confined life in exile.

The Sport 4 Development program, run by the U.N. children's agency, aims to bring 12,000 children, mostly Syrian refugees, to blacktops and turf pitches this year to teach the basics of soccer and basketball, and to ease the pain of war and displacement.

In Orange County, California, dozens of immigrant parents have signed legal documents authorizing friends and relatives to pick up their children from school and access their bank accounts to pay their bills in the event they are arrested by immigration agents.

In Philadelphia, immigrants are carrying around wallet-size "Know Your Rights" guides in Spanish and English that explain what to do if they're rounded up.

A Lebanese national and U.S. permanent resident sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran has confessed that he had tried to "encourage decadence" in the Iranian society, an Iranian semi-official news agency has quoted a Revolutionary Guard commander as saying.