The US State Department says 18 of the 19 US embassies and consulates in the Middle East and Africa that have been closed due to a terrorist threat will reopen tomorrow or on Monday.

The US State Department is ordering non-emergency government personnel to leave the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan.

An RAF Typhoon jet today escorted a passenger plane into Stansted Airport following an incident on board.

The double explosion at the Boston Marathon is the latest in a number of terrorist attacks on sporting events.

A six-year-old girl is on her way home more than three years after she was abducted by her father and taken to Pakistan, sources said today.

A suicide bomber blew himself up among police guards deployed in front of a court in Lahore, Pakistan, ahead of a planned protest by lawyers today, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens more, officials and witnesses said.

A powerful bomb went off among police guards deployed in front of a court in Lahore, Pakistan, ahead of a planned protest by lawyers today, killing at least five people and wounding 20, officials and witnesses said.

The ICC today announced that the Women’s World Cup qualifier event, scheduled to be staged in Lahore, Pakistan from February 18-24 2008, will now take place in South Africa instead.

Senior Pakistani opposition leader Javed Hashmi was released from prison today and received a rapturous welcome from hundreds of chanting, flag-waving supporters, a day after the Supreme Court granted him bail.

Up to 38 people who may have been held in secret CIA prisons are missing, according to an American human rights group.

More than 20,000 supporters of a radical Islamic group held a peaceful rally against the publication of Prophet Mohammed cartoons today in Lahore, Pakistan.

The Court of Criminal Appeal today varied prison sentences imposed last year by Mr Justice Paul Carney on a serial rapist who raped three woman in vicious attacks in Dublin.

CompiledJanuary 2005: Paul Buckley, aged 32, of Baker’s Road, Gurranabraher, was given a four-year sentence by Mr Justice Paul Butler for the rape and assault causing harm of a 25-year-old woman in the garden of a house in April 2002.

Pakistani intelligence agents believe one of the London suicide bombers visited a religious school run by an al Qaida-linked terror group, two senior officials said today.

Pakistani authorities have captured another suspected key al Qaida figure – a man US government sources say oversees communication among the terror network’s operatives.

India’s prime minister snubbed Pakistan’s president and shrugged off his plea for dialogue today, apparently ending all possibility of talks between the nuclear-armed nations whose armies are on high alert.

Overnight mortar shelling between Indian and Pakistani troops had border villagers convinced today that war is coming.

India said today it would work hard to achieve peace with Pakistan during a visit by its military ruler but blamed its neighbour for fuelling the Islamic rebellion in the disputed province of Kashmir.