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Second Taliban bomb attack kills 13 near Pakistan army HQ

A Taliban suicide bomber killed 13 people in a crowded market near the Pakistani army headquarters on Monday, a day after the Taliban killed 20 soldiers near the largely lawless, tribal region of North Waziristan, police said. The market, a short walk from the army headquarters in Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad, was in one of the most secure areas of the city. The area was cordoned off by the military immediately after the blast. Two college students wearing blue uniforms were among the dead, their bodies lying near wreckage of a bicycle and pools of blood. Rescue workers struggled to help the wounded. Windows were shattered several hundred meters away. The attacks come after a couple of months of relative calm as the Taliban regrouped following the death of leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a drone strike in November. A drone had killed his deputy earlier in the year. After protracted negotiations, Mehsud was replaced by Mullah Fazlullah, a ruthless commander who has made lar

Missionary Bae jailed in North Korea 'wants U.S. to help him get home': Kyodo

U.S. missionary Kenneth Bae, imprisoned in reclusive North Korea for more than a year, said on Monday he wants to return to his family as soon as possible and hopes the United States will help, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported. _0"> The appeal came after North Korea signaled last week it was prepared to reach out to South Korea if it abandoned military drills with the United States that start next month and as Pyongyang appeared to embark on a charm offensive. Bae, a 45-year old ethnic Korean, was jailed for 15 years of hard labor for state subversion in North Korea, where he was detained in 2012 while leading a tour group. North Korea's Supreme Court said he used his tourism business to form groups aimed at overthrowing the government. Bae met "a limited number of media outlets" in the North Korean capital Pyongyang and expressed hope of the United States securing his release, Kyodo said. He admitted he had broken North Korean laws. Footage release

Five killed by snipers in Lebanon's Tripoli

Five people have been killed by sniper fire since Saturday in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, medical and security sources said. _0"> The deaths are the latest round of violence fuelled by sectarian tensions over neighboring Syria's civil war. Tripoli, 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Syrian border, has been subject to sharp divisions between the Sunni Muslim majority and small Alawite community for decades. The Lebanese army used "rockets" for the first time to quell the fighting between rival neighborhoods, one security source said, without specifying which weapons were used. Normally, soldiers use assault rifles to target snipers. The sources said three of the dead belonged to the Sunni Muslim Bab al-Tabbaneh district, whose residents overwhelmingly support the Sunni Muslim rebels battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Two others killed were from the Alawite neighborhood of Jebel Mohsen, which supports fellow Alawite Assad. Sniper attacks ar

Thai government considers state of emergency after weekend violence

Thai authorities are "very seriously" considering a state of emergency after a weekend of violence in the capital where protesters have been trying for more than two months to bring down the government, the security chief said on Monday. The violence is the latest episode in an eight-year conflict that pits Bangkok's middle class and royalist establishment against poorer, mainly rural supporters of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her brother, ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled by the military in 2006. "We're prepared to use the emergency decree ... Everyone involved including the police, the military and the government is considering this option very seriously, but has not yet come to an agreement," National Security Council chief Paradorn Pattantabutr told Reuters after meeting Yingluck. "The protesters have said they will close various government offices. So far, their closures have been symbolic, they go to government offices

Hong Kong woman held on suspicion of abusing Indonesian maids

A Hong Kong woman was arrested on Monday on suspicion of abusing her Indonesian maids in a case that has sparked widespread outrage and drawn fresh attention to the risks faced by the migrant community. A housewife surnamed Law, 44, was arrested at the airport when she was trying to leave for Thailand , Hong Kong police said at a briefing. Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, a 23-year-old maid who said she had been badly beaten by her employer, is recovering at a hospital in Sragen, a city in central Java, after flying out from Hong Kong in early January. A second maid, identified only as Susi, who claimed to have been abused by the same employer, also gave a statement to police, saying she had frequently been beaten and abused. Law was believed to have a connection with the two cases, which would be dealt with as wounding cases, the police said. No formal charges have been laid against her. Hong Kong, an ex-British territory that returned to Chinese rule in 1997, has around 300,000 foreig

Baghdad bomb blasts kill 26, Iraqi troops fight Sunni rebels

Seven bomb explosions killed 26 people and wounded 67 in the Iraqi capital on Monday, police and medics said, as security forces battled Sunni Muslim militants around the western cities of Falluja and Ramadi. _0"> The bloodiest attack occurred in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim Abu Dsheer district in southern Baghdad, where a car bomb near a crowded market killed seven people and wounded 18. No group claimed responsibility for the blasts. But Sunni insurgents, some of them linked to al Qaeda, are widely blamed for a surge in violence in the past year apparently aimed at undermining the Shi'ite-led government and provoking a return to all-out sectarian strife. Al Qaeda militants and their local allies seized control of Falluja and parts of Ramadi on January 1, exploiting resentment among minority Sunnis against the government for policies perceived as unfairly penalizing their once-dominant community. Five of Monday's bombs targeted mainly Shi'ite districts of th

Exclusive: Syrian opposition sets deadline for Iran peace talks invite withdrawal

Syria's main opposition body, the National Coalition, will not attend peace talks in Switzerland scheduled for this week unless the United Nations retracts its invitation to Iran by 2:00 PM EST on Monday, a senior coalition member said. Late on Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited Iran to the conference, dubbed "Geneva 2", prompting the Coalition to quickly issue an ultimatum, on which it has now set a time limit. "We are giving a deadline of 1900 GMT (2:00 PM ET) for the invitation to be withdrawn," Anas Abdah, member of the National Coalition's political committee, told Reuters. Reading an official coalition statement, Abdah reiterated that the Coalition would accept Iran's participation only if it "publicly states that it is withdrawing its forces, committing to the Geneva 1 agreement in full and committing to implementing any results of Geneva 2". The accord reached in Geneva in 2012 calls for a transitional government