Kazakhstan has sentenced former prime minister Serik Akhmetov to 10 years in prison, a court said Saturday, the first time a former official of such stature will serve jail time in the country.

On Friday, a court in the industrial city of Karaganda found Akhmetov guilty on four corruption-related charges including embezzlement and abuse of power, in a huge case involving more than 20 defendants in the energy-rich state.

The United Nations Security Council condemned deadly coordinated pre-dawn assaults on three army bases in Burundi on Friday, urging calm and dialogue.

The council's 15 member countries "condemned in the strongest terms the recent attacks by unidentified assailants and urged all involved actors to refrain from violence," US Ambassador Samantha Power said following closed-door talks.

At least one soldier was killed and four others wounded including a passerby when a bomb exploded at a paramilitary checkpoint in southwest Pakistan, police said.

The bomb, planted close to the Frontier Corps (FC) checkpoint went off early Saturday when soldiers reached the site for daily duty in Quetta, the main town of oil and gas rich Baluchistan province, senior police official Abdul Waheed Khattak told Agence France Presse.

Donald Trump is a disgrace and should pull out of the United States presidential race, Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal tweeted late on Friday.

"@realDonaldTrump You are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America," Alwaleed said on his official Twitter account, @Alwaleed_Talal. 

Minor scuffles broke out between anti-Islam and anti-racism protesters as hundreds of people and police congregated at a Sydney beach Saturday to mark the 10th anniversary of modern Australia's worst race riots.

Riot police and mounted units descended on Cronulla beach, a scenic spot in southern Sydney, as anti-Islam groups blocked by courts from organising a "memorial" rally in support of the December 11, 2005 incident held a "halal-free" barbecue.

Two days of rare, high-level talks between North and South Korea aimed at easing cross-border tensions broke up Saturday with no agreement and no set date for further discussions.

South Korea's chief delegate, Hwang Boo-Gi, suggested North Korean intransigence over what issues could be discussed had contributed to the failure of the meeting in the jointly-run Kaesong industrial zone.

At least four Afghan policemen and two Spaniards were killed in an hours-long Taliban siege near the Spanish embassy in Kabul's diplomatic quarter, the latest high-profile insurgent attack that ended early Saturday.

Multiple blasts and gunfire rocked the high-security zone after the brazen raid began Friday evening, just hours after President Ashraf Ghani voiced optimism that a peace process with the Taliban would resume within weeks.

North and South Korea agreed Friday to extend rare, high-level talks into a second day, following an initial round of discussions aimed at building on an August agreement to ease cross-border tensions.

The vice-minister level talks, held on the North Korean side of the border in the jointly-run Kaesong industrial zone, will resume Saturday morning, Seoul's Unification Ministry said.

Turkish authorities on Friday launched a new operation to arrest dozens of prominent suspects in a vast probe into the activities of a U.S.-based preacher who is the main foe of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Prosecutors issued 65 arrest warrants, with raids carried out in Ankara, Izmir and several other cities, the official Anatolia news agency reported. 

The Turkish authorities on Friday lifted a nine-day curfew in a key district in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir but then promptly reimposed the measure.

The local authorities had kept the curfew in place since December 2 in the central Sur district of Diyarbakir, the main city of Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast, for an operation against suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.