U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced Wednesday he will not run for the White House in 2016, ending his life-long political dream and months of fevered speculation that has split Democrats.

His decision not to seek the party's nomination appeared to make frontrunner Hillary Clinton's path significantly clearer.

Twenty journalists are behind bars in Turkey on mainly terrorism-related charges, media rights groups said Wednesday, lashing out at increased state pressure on reporters ahead of the November 1 election.

"Many journalists are in prison for simply doing their jobs, which is reporting to the public," Barbara Trionfi, executive director of the International Press Institute, said after a three-day "emergency mission" to Turkey.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday will discuss Iran's recent missile test, at the request of the United States which maintains it violated U.N. resolutions, diplomats said.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power last week said Washington had concluded that a medium-range ballistic missile launched on October 10 was capable of delivering a nuclear weapon and was a "clear violation" of UN resolutions.

Prosecutors in Libya's capital said Wednesday they were ready to cooperate with Britain after it identified new Libyan suspects in the bombing of an airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.

"We have received nothing so far" in terms of requests from Britain for any help, said Seddig Essour, head of investigations in the prosecutor's office.

Brazil's opposition filed a new impeachment petition against President Dilma Rousseff on Wednesday, accusing her of illegal accounting practices.

The much-anticipated petition, whose authors include a founder of Rousseff's Workers' Party, was handed over to congressional lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha.

South African riot police used stun grenades to disperse protesting students outside parliament in Cape Town on Wednesday, as demonstrations against rising university fees rocked campuses around the country.

Hundreds of students forced their way through gates of the parliament complex and gathered at the entrance of the national assembly building, clashing with police who tried to force them back.

Panicked residents fled the capital of the opium-rich southern Afghan province of Helmand Wednesday after the Taliban stormed an outlying neighborhood, triggering clashes as the insurgents step up offensives around the country.

The Taliban late Tuesday seized some police checkpoints in Babaji, a suburb of Lashkar Gah city, but the interior ministry said commando units mounted a swift counter-attack, flushing out the militants from the area.

A U.S. F-18 fighter jet crashed near a British air base on Wednesday, killing one person, according to police.

"We can confirm that the aircraft was a military aircraft," said a spokesman from Cambridgeshire Police in south east England.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explicitly endorsed a nuclear deal with world powers for the first time Wednesday, but warned his president it contained weaknesses that must be guarded against.

Despite more than two years of negotiations that culminated in a July 14 accord between Iran and world powers, Khamenei had never before said openly that he backed the diplomacy. Nor had he said he was against it.

Spanish police on Wednesday arrested the treasurer of Catalonia's ruling separatist party on suspicion of taking bribes in exchange for public works contracts.

Police detained the treasurer of the Convergence party, Andreu Viloca, along with at least three businessmen in the province of Tarragona as part of an ongoing corruption probe, a police spokeswoman said.