Prime Minister David Cameron will start face-to-face discussions at a summit Friday with European partners on renegotiating Britain's position in the European Union ahead of an in-out referendum by 2017.

On his first foreign trip since winning a general election earlier this month, Cameron is set to meet some of Europe's leading figures as he seeks to secure reforms over issues including immigration.

Hunkered down in his Pakistani compound, Osama bin Laden pleaded with his followers to stay focused on attacking the United States instead of being dragged into Muslim infighting.

Documents declassified on Wednesday shed new light on the mindset of Al-Qaida's founder, his debates over tactics, his anxiety over Western spying and his fixation with the group's media image.

The 22-year-old would-be-jihadist wrote to his reclusive father to say he was itching to join the fight. Hamza trained with explosives and embraced the terror network that killed 3,000 Americans in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But young Hamza was no run-of-the-mill jihadist recruit. He was the favorite son of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, who was grooming him to take over as Al-Qaida's leader, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Fewer conflicts took place around the world last year but they killed far more people than before, a leading military think-tank said as it launched a new report Wednesday.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which is based in London, detailed 42 armed conflicts that took place globally in 2014, 21 fewer than the 63 recorded in 2008.

A United Nations conference to re-launch political talks in Yemen will open in Geneva next week, a U.N. spokesman said Wednesday, despite uncertainty over who will attend the gathering.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the May 28 meeting was to "restore momentum towards a Yemeni-led political transition process" after weeks of conflict that have left 1,850 dead.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini met Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas Wednesday as a row erupted over a controversial Israeli plan to stop Palestinians using the same buses as settlers.

She met the Palestinian leader at his West Bank headquarters at the start of a 24-hour visit to the region on her first trip to the region since a new rightwing Israeli new government was sworn in last week.

A senior advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he would personally defend the head of state with his own weapons and ammunition, as political tensions intensify ahead of June 7 elections.

"I have two licensed guns and hundreds of bullets which I've had for years because of my rights," Yigit Bulut, chief economic advisor to Erdogan, told a live show broadcast on state-run TRT Haber late Tuesday.

South Sudan troops and rebels are fighting heavy battles close to vital oil production zones in the northeastern battleground state of Upper Nile, the United Nations said Wednesday.

Two mortar bombs hit the U.N. base in Melut, killing four civilians including a child, who were among more than 1,500 people sheltering there, the U.N. said. Eight others were wounded.

Algerian soldiers shot dead three Islamist militants Wednesday, raising to 25 the number of suspects killed in a sweep east of the capital where jihadists operate, the defense ministry said.

The ministry said "three terrorists" armed with automatic weapons were killed.

France will host a high-level meeting on the crisis in Iraq and Syria on June 2, the government announced Wednesday, as the international community battles to stem the advance of the Islamic State group.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced at a cabinet meeting "that there would be a meeting in Paris on the whole situation in Syria and Iraq," adding that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry would attend.