Gardaí are seeking the public's help in finding a 15-year-old boy missing from Portrane in north County Dublin, for more than a fortnight.

Five young American men under investigation in Pakistan for alleged terror links had established contact with a Taliban recruiter and have told FBI officials they were on a mission to be martyred, a Pakistani police official said.

A village council in Pakistan ordered four men suspected in the killing of a woman to walk on fire in a centuries-old ritual to prove their guilt or innocence, police said today.

Advancing coalition forces today claimed control of the Shah-e-Kot valley in eastern Afghanistan, sweeping all but a few small groups of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters as allied troops worked their way through the warren of mountain caves.

Calm has returned to the town of Gardez in southern Afghanistan today following two days of fighting between the town’s governing council and a warlord loyal to the UN-installed interim administration.