Nigeria's government says it to wants to negotiate with radical Islamist sect Boko Haram, which is blamed for dozens of killings in the country's northeast.

A government statement says President Goodluck Jonathan has named a seven-person panel to open talks with the group. It says the president appointed the panel after meetings with local leaders.

There was no immediate response to the statement from Boko Haram.

The decision to negotiate follows months of escalating violence centered in Nigeria's Borno state and the state capital, Maiduguri.

A United Nations-backed tribunal has released the names of four men wanted for the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon identified the suspects Friday as Salim Jamil Ayyash, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra.

The four are members of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group, which has denied involvement in the killing.

Pakistani Taliban militants say they are holding a Swiss couple kidnapped earlier this month as they traveled through the country's restive southwestern province of Baluchistan.

The deputy head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Wali-ur Rehman, told media outlets Friday that the couple was in good condition and that his group would release them in exchange for a Pakistani scientist jailed in the United States.

One of the biggest obstacles to providing aid to Somalia has been the heavy hand of the al-Qaida linked militant group al-Shabab, which has so far dictated which aid groups are allowed in and which are banned. But some analysts say the crisis has actually weakened the militant group.

On July 6, al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage announced to the world that the militant group would lift a ban on foreign aid to Somalia to help victims of the worst drought in a generation.

Somali pirates have released a United Arab Emirates-flagged oil tanker and its crew just weeks after capturing the vessel in the Indian Ocean.

The MT Jubba XX was seized on July 16 while travelling from the UAE to the port of Berbera in the breakaway northern Somali region of Somaliland.

It was released Thursday after negotiations between the pirates, local officials and businessmen. The amount of ransom paid was unclear.

The 4,000 ton oil tanker was carrying a crew of 16 people, including sailors from Somalia, Sri Lanka, India, Ethiopia, Burma, Sudan and Bangladesh.

At least 10 people are reported to have been killed in the Somali capital Mogadishu, as African Union and government forces battle militants to protect the flow of food aid.

Witnesses said the deaths occurred during heavy fighting Thursday - one day after the World Food Program airlifted 14 tons of food into Mogadishu.

At least 30 people are reported wounded as government and AU troops fought militants with the al-Qaida-linked group, al-Shabab, which has banned assistance from the U.N. food agency.

A United States congressman says a Somalia-based terror group is recruiting more Muslim Americans than al-Qaida.

Republican Peter King, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House of Representatives, told fellow lawmakers Wednesday that the Somali group al-Shabab has successfully recruited 40 Muslim Americans to join its ranks.

King said al-Shabab’s recruitment campaign is increasing the chances the group will strike outside of the Horn of Africa, and said the Muslim-American members “pose a direct threat to the U.S.”

Al-Qaida-linked militants in Yemen are demanding a $12 million ransom for the release of three French aid workers who went missing in May.

Yemeni security officials and tribesmen revealed the demand on Wednesday.

The two women and one man disappeared in the eastern city of Sayoun, where they had been working with a French-based relief agency.

French and Yemen authorities previously said the aid workers were probably kidnapped but had no definite word on their status.

A newspaper reporter who covered police stories in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Veracruz has been found dead.

Authorities say the body of Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, a reporter for the Notiver newspaper, was discovered Tuesday behind the offices of another paper, and that a note had been left beside her remains. Ordaz de la Cruz had been missing since Sunday.