The U.N. Security Council is expressing alarm at the imminent threat of the spread of polio through Sudan's violence-wracked South Kordofan and Blue Nile states and the continuing outbreak of polio in the Horn of Africa.

The U.N. humanitarian office has reported that the threat affects more than 165,000 children in the two Sudanese states "due to a lack of immunization in the border area in more than two years," the Security Council said in a statement Friday.

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, after all. We have the technology.

The term "bionic man" was the stuff of science fiction in the 1970s, when a popular TV show called "The Six Million Dollar Man" chronicled the adventures of Steve Austin, a former astronaut whose body was rebuilt using artificial parts after he nearly died.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Afghanistan Friday for urgent talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as an end of October deadline looms for completing a security deal that would allow American troops to remain in Afghanistan after the end of the NATO-led military mission next year.

Kerry's unannounced visit to Kabul comes as talks on the Bilateral Security Agreement have foundered over issues of Afghan sovereignty despite a year of negotiations.

A tropical storm barreling toward the northern Philippines on Friday intensified into a typhoon with destructive winds and rain threatening farmland and populated areas, including the capital, Manila.

Typhoon Nari forced U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to call off a trip Friday to the Philippines. Kerry, who was visiting Southeast Asia for regional summits, said in Brunei on Thursday he was advised by his pilots to postpone the trip.

Three Costa Rican doctors and a Greek citizen have been detained under suspicion they are part of ring that trafficked kidneys to foreigners, authorities said Thursday.

Attorney General Carlos Jimenez said the doctors worked at the public Calderon Guardia Hospital in the capital, San Jose, but performed transplants of illegally purchased kidneys at two private clinics in other parts of the country.

A car bomb exploded outside the Swedish consulate in the restive Libyan city of Benghazi Friday, seriously damaging the building but causing no casualties, a security official said.

"A powerful explosion in front of the Swedish consulate caused serious damage to it and neighboring buildings but no casualties," Colonel Abdullah Zaidi said.

Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, said Thursday that he respects but disagrees with complaints about his company's privacy policies made by data protection authorities in six European countries.

Schmidt said the Internet search and ad giant has "very broadly communicated" its policies to authorities in the countries where the complaints have been made.

Facebook is getting rid of a privacy feature that let users limit who can find them on the social network.

Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it is removing a setting that controls whether users could be found when people type their name into the website's search bar.

Turkey has imposed financial sanctions on some 350 people and dozens of organizations that have been blacklisted by the United Nations Security Council for alleged links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

The move, made public late Thursday, would freeze any assets those individuals or groups may have in Turkey.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons won this year's Nobel Peace Prize on Friday "for its extensive efforts" to rid the world of such arsenals, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

"The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law," the committee said. "Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons."