Pioneering U.S. blues and soul singer Etta James, best known for her 1960 hit "At Last," died Friday from leukemia, her manager said. She was 73.

James, who flitted effortlessly from jazz, pop and love ballads to feisty R&B and who plunged into drug addiction before resurrecting her career to win six Grammys, died at a hospital in Riverside, California.

Somali Islamist gunmen ambushed a convoy of government officials and journalists Friday during intense fighting in Mogadishu, killing three soldiers and an official, an Agence France Presse photographer said.

"We were heading to the frontline when our convoy was ambushed by Shebab fighters, an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) struck one vehicle," the photographer said, adding that he saw four bodies.

Morocco's new foreign minister Saad Eddine Othmani will visit Algiers next week, his ministry said Friday, as Rabat seeks to normalize ties strained for decades over the disputed Western Sahara region.

The two-day visit starting Monday will include talks with his counterpart Mourad Medelci and a meeting with Algeria's veteran President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, it said.

Dressed in green military fatigues and clutching CVs under their arms, young Libyans who fought Moammar Gadhafi are now signing up to register for government jobs.

Some of these men spent months fighting Gadhafi’s forces on the front lines of the conflict that erupted last February and have provided security on Libya's streets since fighting ended in October, after Gadhafi was killed.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged "reason and dialogue" in the row with Turkey on the Armenian genocide, in a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seen by Agence France Presse Friday.

"I hope we can make reason prevail and maintain our dialogue, as befits allied and friendly countries," Sarkozy wrote after Erdogan's government reacted strongly to a bill criminalizing denial of the Armenian genocide under Ottoman Turkish rule, which the French Senate will debate on Monday.

South Sudan has ordered the shutdown of oil production amid a deepening row with Khartoum over pipeline fees, the government said Friday.

"The government has instructed the minister of petroleum and mining to proceed with arrangements for a complete shutdown of oil production", Minister of Information Barnaba Marial Benjamin told Agence France Presse Friday.

U.S. military chief General Martin Dempsey on Friday urged Israel to keep the channels of communication open amid concerns the Jewish state could launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Speaking after talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on what was his first visit to Israel since taking office last October, Dempsey said both sides would benefit from greater engagement over regional issues, in an apparent reference to the Iranian nuclear standoff.

The world last year was not quite as warm as it has been for most of the past decade, government scientists said Thursday, but it continues a general trend of rising temperatures.

The average global temperature was 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit (14.4 Celsius), making 2011 the 11th hottest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. That's 0.9 degrees (0.5 C) warmer than the 20th century average, officials said. In fact, it was hotter than every year last century except 1998.

Oil prices were higher in Asian trade Friday as a weaker U.S. currency encouraged buying of the dollar-priced commodity.

New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate crude for delivery in February, was up 26 cents to $100.65 a barrel in the afternoon.

Asian markets rose for a fourth straight day Friday on strong French and Spanish bond sales, the lowest U.S. jobs claims for almost four years and hopes Greece will agree a debt deal with its creditors.

The euro also strengthened against the dollar and the yen as fears over the Eurozone crisis abated while financial plays were lifted by more upbeat earnings reports from U.S. banks.