Syria's President Bashar Assad has paid tribute to his army and a group of soldiers who escaped an almost month-long rebel siege, in comments which follow a series of regime losses.

Assad, quoted by state news agency SANA late Friday, saluted the "heroism" of some 150 soldiers and their families who were able to escape a hospital building in the town of Jisr al-Shughur in northwestern Syria.

The bodies of five Tunisian migrants trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa were recovered from the sea Saturday while 49 others were rescued, Tunisia's coast guard said.

The coast guard station in Teboulba said the five migrants who had drowned were recovered and the others rescued in the night off the town's coast.

Fans of former Uruguay president Jose Mujica, known for fully legalizing marijuana, from the cannabis field to the joint, can now light up in his honor with the new "Mujica gold" strain.

The variety of pot was created "as a tribute" to the colorful iconoclast "in recognition of his work," said Javier Ruiz, part of the team that created the seed.

Only hours before Hillary Clinton was to face her biggest challenge and tragedy as U.S. secretary of state, she asked an aide to get her a French documentary about Libya.

"Can you get us a copy of Bernard Henri-Levi's (sic) film about Libya. I think Harvey made it and it showed at Cannes last spring," the then secretary of state wrote to her trusted friend and confidant Huma Abedin at 5:50 am on September 11, 2012.

The IMF urged Brazil to get its fiscal house in order to emerge from five years of low growth as South America's largest economy Friday unveiled a package of budget cuts in a move to kickstart a recovery.

Brazil has lost ground since a period of high growth largely fueled by Chinese-led demand for commodities came to an end and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts GDP will contract by around 1.0 percent this year.

A 65-year-old German woman, who is already a mother of 13 children, has given birth to quadruplets after undergoing an artificial insemination procedure in Ukraine, RTL television reported early on Saturday.

The three boys and one girl were born premature at 26 weeks in a Berlin hospital but have "good chances of surviving," the report said.

Burundian anti-government protesters began a two-day truce Saturday after almost a month of deadly violence triggered by the president's bid for a third term culminating in a deadly grenade attack Friday.

The streets of the capital Bujumbura were calm and quiet, with some shops open and a few policemen sitting casually at junctions and roundabouts -- a marked difference to protests that have left over 20 people dead since the crisis erupted in late April, and which has included a failed coup.

Iraqi forces retook territory from the Islamic State jihadist group east of Ramadi on Saturday, commanders said, in their first counterattack since Anbar's provincial capital fell a week ago.

A mosaic of anti-IS forces had for days been massing in the Euphrates Valley to ready for an offensive aimed at turning the tide on rampant jihadists.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir has warned that proposed international sanctions will only worsen the civil war ravaging his country.

Repeated threats of sanctions by the UN Security Council, as well as the African Union and regional bloc IGAD, have been made amid fierce international criticism of Kiir and his arch-rival, rebel chief Riek Machar, for failing to end a 17-month war that has seen accusations of gross human rights abuses.

Bullets whistled overhead, a black Islamic State flag flapping in the distance, but all Friar Najeeb Michaeel could think of as he fled the jihadists was how to save hundreds of ancient Iraqi manuscripts in his possession.

"You are going to get us killed with your archives," Michaeel's assistant Watheq Qassab grumbled as he struggled to carry six boxes of the documents dated between the 13th and 19th century across the border from Iraq into Kurdistan in August last year.