Bangladesh police shot and killed a top militant who was the main suspect behind deadly bomb blasts at a Shiite shrine during late-night raids, officers said Thursday.

Five militants from banned local Islamist outfit Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were also arrested during the raids carried out by police in Dhaka late Wednesday.

Away from public view, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a defense bill Wednesday barbed with measures designed to undo his bid to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In a terse statement, the White House said Obama has signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2016, along with several other pieces of legislation.

Sudanese security agents arrested three opposition figures late Wednesday, despite efforts to persuade them to join national dialogue talks that started last month, the alliance they are all part of said.

"This evening, the security apparatus arrested the head of the political committee, Siddig Yousif, chief of the legal committee, Yahya Hussein and Al-Azhari Ali," the National Consensus Forces said in a statement. 

Fifteen people were killed in Russia on Thursday when a civilian helicopter crashed in Siberia, regional authorities said.

The Mi-8 helicopter, which was transporting 22 passengers and four crew members, crashed outside the town of Igarka in Western Siberia, some 2,800 kilometres (1,750 miles) northeast of Moscow.

North and South Korean officials sat down Thursday for rare talks aimed at setting up a sustainable high-level dialogue that has constantly eluded the two rivals.

The meeting at the border truce village of Panmunjom began shortly before 1:00pm (0400 GMT) and marked the first inter-governmental interaction since August when the two sides met to defuse a crisis that had pushed them to the brink of an armed conflict.

In freezing temperatures and light snowfall, South Korea held a state funeral on Thursday for former president Kim Young-Sam, whose 1992 election victory brought a formal end to more than 30 years of military rule.

The last remaining bodies from a New Zealand helicopter crash that claimed seven lives were airlifted from a glacier Thursday after rescue crews took advantage of a break in the weather.

The sightseeing chopper, piloted by a New Zealander with four British and two Australian tourists on board, plunged into Fox Glacier on Saturday, but dismal conditions had stalled recovery efforts at the popular South Island tourist site.

Russia said Thursday that it would reinforce control over Turkish food imports citing frequent violations of safety standards, as tensions surged with Ankara over the downing of a Russian warplane on the Syrian border.

Some 15 percent of Turkish agricultural produce does not meet Russian standards with levels of pesticides, nitrates and nitrites considerably above safe limits, Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev said.

Pope Francis held his first open-air mass in Africa on Thursday with huge crowds hailing heavy rains as "God's blessing" as they sung and danced in the Kenyan capital.

Thousands of people queued through the night braving torrential downpours to take part in the mass.

A large but very deep 6.7 magnitude earthquake hit western Brazil Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake struck at 12:45 am (5:45 GMT) at a depth of 372 miles (599 kilometers). It occurred some 80 miles southwest of the town of Tarauaca and around 435 miles northeast of Lima, Peru.