Afghan security forces arrested nine members of a terrorist cell and seized a substantial amount of explosives, foiling a plot to stage suicide bombings and other attacks in Kabul, the country’s intelligence service said today.

AN Indian court yesterday sentenced to death three people, including a married couple, for planting high-explosive bombs that killed 52 in the city of Mumbai in 2003.

The only surviving terror suspect in the Mumbai attacks will get his first chance to enter his pleas to a series of charges in court tomorrow.

A lawyer has been appointed for the lone surviving gunman in the Mumbai terror attacks.

INDIA acknowledged the Mumbai attacks had uncovered security lapses but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday evidence showed the strike originated on a neighbour’s soil, a clear reference to Pakistan.

A terrorist carrying detailed sketches of targets in last week’s Mumbai massacre was captured earlier this year, it emerged today.

ANOUSHEH Ansari, the world’s first female paying space tourist, returned to Earth yesterday after 11 days in space capped by the bone-jarring journey home from the international space station.

Three space explorers including American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari today began getting reacquainted with their home planet, undergoing medical checks and coping with the unfamiliarity of gravity.

The capsule carrying the first paying female space tourist docked smoothly at the international space station today.

A TELECOMS entrepreneur blasted off yesterday on a Russian rocket bound for the international space station, achieving her dream of becoming the world’s first paying female space tourist.

A Russian-built rocket carrying a new US-Russian crew and the world’s first female space tourist lifted off today and streaked into the cloudless sky over Kazakhstan, heading for the international space station.

INDIAN anti-terrorist police have arrested a fourth man in connection with the July 11 Mumbai train bombings that killed 183 and injured more than 800, according to reports.

Indian police have arrested a fourth suspect in connection with the Mumbai train blasts that killed more than 200 people, officials said today.

THE Jordanian Islamist militant and most-wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is alive, well and seeking alliances among Sunni opponents of US-led forces in Iraq, new reports say.

A test pilot in a stubby rocket plane will try to climb more than 60 miles over California’s Mojave Desert and punch through the atmosphere today in the first stage of a quest to win a €8m prize meant to encourage space tourism.

Indian government forces killed a top Islamic guerrilla leader during a raid early today on his hide-out in India’s troubled Jammu-Kashmir, police said.

India made a dramatic U-turn in its Kashmir policy today, announcing that its deputy prime minister will hold talks with the Kashmiri separatists it has shunned and tried to discredit for 13 years.

Indian police have arrested a Pakistani who is accused of plotting to kidnap cricket stars Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly.

A Pakistani man today confessed to attacking the US cultural centre in Calcutta, as he was dying after a shoot-out with Indian police, the Indian government said.