A suicide bomber struck a military facility in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 31 soldiers and wounding more than 40 others.

Pakistani authorities say the soldiers were busy in their early training session in Mardan, when a teenage bomber dressed in a school uniform walked up to them and detonated the explosives.

The powerful blast is said to have instantly caused most of the deaths. Doctors fear the toll could rise because some of those wounded are in critical condition.

Witnesses say several schools are also located near the military base, called Punjab Regiment Center.

A journalist in Haiti has been shot to death on a street in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Reports say the journalist, Jean Richard Louis Charles, had just emerged from a bank when three men attacked him and shot him in the head.

A police officer nearby shot and killed one of the gunmen. The other two attackers escaped.

Police are investigating. Some reports say the shooting was an attempted robbery.

Armed pirates have seized a U.S.-bound oil tanker carrying about $200 million worth of crude off the coast of Oman.
Pirates captured the supertanker Irene SL Wednesday, as it was transporting some two million barrels of crude oil.

The European Union’s anti-piracy force says the Greek-flagged vessel has a crew of 25, including 17 Filipinos, seven Greeks and one Georgian. Officials say communication with the vessel has been cut off, and the status of the crew is unknown.

Military officials says Mexican soldiers have rescued 47 suspected kidnap victims during a drug trafficking investigation.

Authorities say the 44 Guatemalan migrants and three Mexicans were found locked in a house in Reynosa on Tuesday.

Officials say no arrests have been made in connection with the apparent kidnappings.

Mexican officials have not publicly commented on who might be responsible for the kidnappings.

Last August, 72 migrants from Central and South American were found slain on a ranch in Mexico.

An Islamic rebel leader in Russia's North Caucasus region claims he ordered last month's suicide bombing at a busy Moscow airport, killing 35 people.

Doku Umarov makes the claim in a video posted Monday on an Islamic rebel website.

The veteran Chechen rebel commander says the attack was aimed at what he calls the "chauvinist regime" of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

As the self-styled "Emir" of the Caucasus, Umarov wants to set up an independent fundamentalist Islamic state in the North Caucasus, which includes the mainly Muslim republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

A U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is taking steps to ensure a speedy trial.

The tribunal in the Dutch town of Leidschendam began a hearing Monday to decide, among other things, how an act of terrorism should be defined and under which law - Lebanese or international.

The court hopes that clarifying legal questions now will enable it to hold a speedy trial for the suspects in the truck bombing that killed Mr. Hariri and 22 other people in Beirut on February 14, 2005.

Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov is vowing to carry out more terrorist attacks on Russia, and says Moscow faces "a year of blood and tears" if it does not relinquish control of the largely-Muslim North Caucasus.

We are witnessing the collapse of the Middle East

If Egypt should fall, it will mark the beginning of the end for what little remaining stability there is in the Middle East. Jordan is facing similar unrest, as is Algeria and Yemen. Lebanon and Tunisia fell in January. It is highly unlikely that these events are unrelated. A combination of leftist and Islamist forces provoked the protests, and we are likely looking at a ring of radical Islamic states rising up to surround Israel.

Mauritania says it is stepping up attacks against al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists across the border in Mali after this week's killing of three suspected militants outside the Mauritanian capital.

Defense Minister Hamady Ould Hamady says all of the suspected terrorists captured and killed outside Nouakchott this week crossed the border from Mali.

Hamady says this proves the wisdom of Mauritania attacking terrorists at their bases in Mali, and the military will step-up those attacks as part of a strategy to defeat terrorists who threaten national security.