Canada's Supreme Court on Friday struck down key portions of a law that effectively criminalized prostitution by banning brothels and soliciting on the streets, declaring this disproportionate.

But it stayed its unanimous nine to zero ruling for one year to allow Parliament to consider whether or not impose other limits on where and how prostitution may be conducted.

U.S. President Barack Obama Friday gave the Pentagon a year to fix the scourge of sexual assaults that have sparked calls for commanders to lose the power to adjudicate such crimes.

The military in August launched a raft of new measures to combat sexual assaults but their action did not appease some lawmakers who want much stronger measures to deal with hundreds of alleged offenses from harassment to rape.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Friday a role played "behind the scenes" by former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in helping to secure the release of Kremlin critic and Russian ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

"The German government appreciates the efforts of former federal minister Genscher who worked intensively on the case behind the scenes," Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement.

Lawyers for Pakistan's former president Pervez Musharraf said Friday a treason charge levied against him was politically motivated and that he would face a "show trial", urging the U.N. to intervene.

The legal team also called on the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia to denounce Musharraf's trial to "repay their debt" for his support in the U.S.-led "war on terror" in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A Chinese state oil company said Friday it was evacuating workers because of political violence in South Sudan that has left hundreds dead.

"We are arranging the orderly evacuation of our workers, but I can't tell the evacuation destination or how many workers are being flown out," a spokesman for China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) told Agence France Presse.

Bolivia on Friday announced the expulsion of the Danish non-governmental education development agency IBIS, accusing it of meddling in its internal affairs.

In announcing the decision, a top aide to leftist President Evo Morales said the expulsion should be seen as a clear warning to other non-governmental groups active in the poor Andean country.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday he would nominate Democratic Senator Max Baucus as his new ambassador to China, at a time of spiking tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Baucus, 72, who has served Montana in the Senate since 1978, has long been a key figure in building the Sino-U.S. trading relationship and is known for holding Beijing to account to international economic and commercial regulations.

Attackers slaughtered at least 20 civilians sheltering in a U.N. base in South Sudan in an attack in which two Indian peacekeepers died, the U.N. said Friday.

Some 2,000 armed ethnic Nuer youths stormed the U.N. base at Akobo in Jonglei state where 36 ethnic Dinka civilians had sought refuge, a U.N. statement said.

EU leaders pledged Friday to do everything possible to deter migrants from embarking on hazardous sea voyages to reach Europe, after more than 360 died in October when their boat sank off Italy's Lampedusa island.

"The European Council calls for the mobilization of all efforts" to discourage migrants -- who come mostly from Africa -- seeking to reach Europe's shores, the bloc's 28 leaders said at a two-day summit in Brussels.

Five policemen have been arrested for allegedly gangraping a teenage schoolgirl in northern India, police said Friday.

The alleged sexual assault is the latest in a string of attacks reported in India since the fatal gang-rape of a student in Delhi a year ago shocked the nation and resulted in lawmakers passing tougher penalties for crimes against women.