Countries need to look for practical ways to defuse incidents in the South China Sea, where China is pitted against smaller neighbors in multiple disputes over islands, Singapore's defense minister said.

Ng Eng Hen told reporters Friday on the sidelines of a meeting in Hawaii that incidents may not necessarily involve military ships. He noted navies have established protocols for when they encounter each other at sea.

Hurricane Matthew is roaring across the Caribbean Sea as a monster Category 5 storm on a course that puts Jamaica, as well as parts of Haiti and Cuba, in the path of its potentially devastating winds and rain.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center called it the strongest Atlantic hurricane since Felix in 2007, and said Matthew will be approaching Jamaica late Sunday night. It is expected to reach the eastern part of the island on Monday.

Turkey's state-run news agency says Kurdish rebels have detonated a roadside bomb in southeastern Turkey as a military vehicle was passing by, killing a village guard and wounding two soldiers.

Anadolu Agency, citing unnamed military sources, says the attack occurred on a highway in Sirnak province, near the border with Iraq.

South Korea's coast guard says three Chinese fishermen have been found dead when a fire broke out on their boat after the coast guard fired a flashbang grenade at the vessel to stop it.

The coast guard said in a statement that the officers boarded the vessel off South Korea's southwestern coast on Thursday and put out the fire. They took 14 other fishermen to a South Korean port.

A car bomb exploded Thursday evening near the home of a senior assistant to Egypt's prosecutor general, a security official said.

The official said the blast took place in the upscale Tagammu Khamis suburb, steps away from the house of Zakraya Abdel-Aziz. One person was injured apparently from flying shrapnel, he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested on Thursday it may be necessary to keep the state of emergency imposed after the July coup bid in place for at least a year.

Pope Francis is urging the world not to look the other way from war and suffering in the Middle East and appealed to leaders "for greater and renewed efforts to achieve peace throughout the Middle East."

The pope made the remarks Thursday during an audience with Catholic charity workers helping to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Syria, Iraq and neighboring countries. Also present was the U.N. special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura.

Aid workers are warning that tens of thousands of children in northeastern Nigeria will die in famine-like conditions created by Boko Haram's Islamic uprising if food doesn't reach them quickly.

UNICEF nutritionist Arjan de Wagt says Nigeria's humanitarian crisis is currently one of the worst in the world because of its severity and the high number of children facing death. He says children are dying but donors are not responding to appeals for aid.

South Korea's military said Thursday that a North Korean soldier had crossed the border between the rivals to defect.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said military officials were investigating the North Korean solider, who defected across the central-east portion of the military demarcation line, which is inside the 4-kilometer-wide (2.5-mile-wide) Demilitarized Zone that separates the countries.

A massive typhoon left one person dead in eastern China on Wednesday, a day after killing four and injuring 260 in Taiwan.

Typhoon Megi weakened to a tropical storm after hitting the coastal city of Quanzhou in Fujian province before dawn, packing winds of up to 118 kilometers (74 miles) per-hour, China's National Meteorological Center said.