A teen-aged suicide bomber killed at least 18 people and wounded 33 others on a bus Wednesday in Pakistan.
The attack was in the town of Kohat in northwest Pakistan. The teenager detonated explosives on board a bus that was preparing to drive to a nearby market, according to city police chief Dilawar Bangish in CNN.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for two suicide bombers who blew themselves during an anti-Taliban meeting Monday, killing 50 people, according to Voice of America.
A German woman died Sunday after being attacked by a shark off the coast of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
Naama Bay, the protected swim area where the attack took place, had only re-opened its waters to tourists the day before as there had been two other shark attacks earlier in the week, said AFP.
The 70-year-old woman, whose name has not been disclosed, was attacked around noon in front of the Hyatt Regency resort. She had called for help once the shark first struck but by the time the lifeguard brought her to shore she had already lost too much blood, said CNN.
Scientists have discovered a planet from outside of our galaxy orbiting a dying star on Thursday.
The new hot, gaseous planet's name, HIP 13044 b, is estimated to be the same size of Jupiter and is 2,000 light years from Earth, said AFP.
Astronomers say the planet originated from a dwarf galaxy, which was later consumed by our own galaxy, said a team writing in the academic journal Science in BBC.
Seven people died from a fire in an immigrant hostel that started in a nearby garbage bin in Dijon, France on Sunday.
Of the seven, one died from jumping from a window and the other six from inhaling the smoke. Three of the dead were French nationals, one was Algerian, another was Vietnamese, and the other two were from Senegal, said BBC.
The hostel had more than 140 people inside when the fire started. Dozens were taken to a temporary shelter and investigators are still figuring out if the fire was intentionally started, said UPI.
A U.S. federal appeals court extended the "don't ask, don't tell" policy indefinitely on Monday as debates continue.
Pressure has been placed on the Obama administration to persuade the U.S. Senate to repeal the law before a new Congress is sworn in. The decision entails gay Americans who disclose their sexual orientations are still not able enlist in the armed forces and risk being investigated and ultimately discharged if they already are serving, said Associated Press.
A judge struck down the policy on Oct. 12 that was implemented 13 years ago although the court issued a temporary injunction to repeal the policy eight days later, said BBC.
Indonesia's most volatile volcano, Mount Merapi, erupted again Sunday, threatening the lives of locals who thought they were safe to return after they had evacuated earlier in the week.
Indonesian troops were deployed on Saturday to remove villagers in the surrounding area of the volcano but the volcano stopped spewing ash later in the day, triggering the return of many to check on their crops. It began to re-erupt Sunday and has killed at least 36 people since Tuesday, said Voice of America.
Nearly 500 people have died from both the volcano and the tsunami that hit the western side of the island on Monday. Relief efforts have been sent to both devastation areas, said the Associated Press.
Strikers against the rising retirement age in France have further secured fuel blockades after the French government authorized the use of a special intervention force on Wednesday.
The strikers have affected all 12 French mainland refineries and one in four fuel stations has run dry, said BBC.
Authorities have been deployed in western and southern cities in France to manage the chaos over the retirement age that will be voted on later this week by the upper house of the French legislature to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67. The fuel blockades have been accompanied by car and garbage can fires, as well as the arresting of several young people, reported Le Monde.
Seventeen Chilean miners have been rescued from a mine in northern Chile as of Wednesday after being trapped underground for 69 days.
The miners were greeted by family members after they emerged and were taken to a triage center for health checks. The operation of rescuing the remaining 16 is predicted to last only another day and a half, reported BBC.
Their struggle to survive has been followed by world media since Aug. 22 when a camera and food rations were delivered down to them. Seventeen days prior, 700,000 tons of rock collapsed in their tunnel, yet they managed to last 17 days on only 48 hours of food, said the Associated Press.
A Pakistani-born U.S. citizen was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for attempting to detonate New York's Times Square with a car bomb in May.
Faisal Shahzad, 31, was arrested 2 days after investigators found a bomb in his car near Times Square. In June, he pleaded guilty to a 10-count indictment, including charges of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting an act of terrorism, said the Wall Street Journal.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said that Shahzad was a "remorseless terrorist" and was "rightly sentenced," reported BBC.
"Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun," he told a federal judge in the Associated Press.
New goals have been declared and old ones have been reassessed by the U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals last week. The summit met Sept. 20-22 to discuss the last decade's progress and have added the goals of improving women's and children's health, stated the United Nations Summit.
The summit established targets ten years ago to reduce the global poverty level. The poverty rate has fallen 27 percent between 1990 and 2005 and the mission to cut the 1990 poverty level in half by 2015 is achievable, reported The Economist.
Other U.N. goals are to improve education and health care, reduce maternal mortality rates, and find better access to safe water and sanitation. Continuous international financial aid and national economic growth is imperative in reducing the global poverty rate, said The Economist.
