Less than a week after an abortive coup attempt, Gambian president Yahya Jammeh handed the foreign and communications portfolios to journalists in a government reshuffle, officials said Tuesday.

Sheriff Bojang, publisher of The Standard newspaper, enters government as minister of information and communications, according to a presidential decree.

Cuba has freed some of the 53 political prisoners identified on a U.S. list as it moves towards normalizing ties with the United States, an American official said Tuesday.

"They have already released some of the prisoners," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

The United States has donated 250 mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicles (MRAPs) to the Iraqi army for use in its campaign against the Islamic State jihadist group, U.S. ambassador Stuart Jones said Tuesday.

"The number one threat to the Iraqi security forces are roadside bombs and vehicle-borne bombs," said Jones, whose country is leading a multinational coalition in air strikes on IS in both Iraq and Syria.

The CIA's inspector general will resign this month but U.S. officials said Monday his departure is not related to his finding last year that the spy agency hacked into computers used by Senate aides. 

The agency's internal watchdog, David Buckley, will be stepping down on January 31, and his move "has been in the works for months," CIA spokesman Christopher White told Agence France Presse.

The US embassy in Indonesia warned Saturday of a potential threat against American interests in country's second biggest city Surabaya.

"The US Embassy has been made aware of a potential threat against US-associated hotels and banks in Surabaya, Indonesia," the embassy said in a statement published on its website.

A Libyan accused over the 1998 al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa died on Friday, days before he was to stand trial in New York.

Abu Anas al-Libi, 50, was on the FBI's most-wanted list with a $5 million price on his head when he was captured by U.S. troops in the Libyan capital Tripoli in October 2013.

A seven-year-old girl walked free from the wreckage of a private plane that crashed in a wooded area of Kentucky on Friday killing four others on board, U.S. police said.

Police were alerted to the crash when they received an emergency call from a local resident, they said in a statement on Facebook.

An eight-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in a toilet at a notorious Philippine prison, officials said Saturday, fueling a national uproar over revelations that its inmates were "living like kings" with stripper bars and jacuzzis.

The girl, who was visiting her inmate father at Bilibid prison in suburban Manila on New Year's Day, was found sprawled on the bathroom floor, naked from the waist down and with a rope tied around her neck, officials said. Initial medical tests did not indicate that she had been raped.

A second suspect has been arrested for allegedly opening fire on two Los Angeles police, the FBI said Thursday, with the United States still on edge over the murders of two New York officers.

The alleged shooter, James Brooks, 19, was arrested Wednesady in Las Vegas, the FBI said in a statement.

A Cuban crackdown on dissident activists caused a new rift with the United States on Wednesday, the first diplomatic scuffle since this month's historic announcement of a renewal in ties.

Authorities arrested 51 dissidents Tuesday to stop them from attending an open mic session convened for Cubans to speak out about their future, said Elizardo Sanchez, the head of the officially banned Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Committee.