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 suicide attacker detonated a bomb early today at a mosque outside the home of Pakistan’s former interior minister as he received visitors on an Islamic holiday, killing a reported 55 people and wounding dozens more, authorities said.

Harsh winter weather is threatening to cut off more than 300,000 survivors of last year’s killer South Asian earthquake from critical food supplies, the United Nations warned today, as the season’s first snows began to fall.

NEW casualty figures from the South Asian earthquake have pushed the death toll to more than 79,000.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake jolted south Asia today, killing at least 21 people and injuring hundreds of others in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.