Pakistan launches air strikes on Taliban
Attacks said to have killed 15 comes after peace talks faltered and Taliban announced it had executed 23 Pakistani soldiers
Pakistani fighter jets have bombed suspected militant hideouts in a tribal area on the Afghan border, killing at least 15 people, security officials said, after attempts to engage the Taliban in peace talks collapsed.
“We received information about militant hideouts and based on our intelligence precision strikes were carried out around midnight in the Mir Ali area,” an intelligence official told Reuters. “Fifteen militants were killed in the bombing. Thirteen of them were foreign fighters.”
Another security official said a cache of arms was destroyed in the strikes.
Nawaz Sharif became prime minister last year with a promise to find a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
Ukraine crisis: Fresh clashes break out despite President Viktor Yanukovych's 'truce' with opposition
Protesters have seized back areas of Independence Square as violence continues for a third day
Israeli settlers angry at reports of US seeking construction freeze
Kerry aides quoted as saying request will be part of framework agreement
Mark Weiss
Israel’s right wing has reacted angrily to reports that Washington will seek an Israeli construction freeze in areas of the West Bank outside the main settlement blocs as soon as an American-drafted framework agreement is finalised.
The Yesha settlers’ council called on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to reject US pressure, saying it had been promised the previous construction freeze in 2010 would not be repeated, since it had not achieved results and only caused Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to become more entrenched in his position.
Deputy defence minister Danny Danon, a member of Mr Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, accused US secretary of state John Kerry of trying to turn the government into a branch of the left-wing opposition Meretz party.
Media muzzle: Egypt's propaganda drive
When Egypt's prosecutor general last month charged 16 Egyptian and four foreign Al Jazeera journalists with broadcasting false news and colluding with a terrorist group, Rena Netjes thought she had nothing to fear.
The Dutch radio and television journalist had never worked for the pan-Arab network, while her name did not match that of the journalist from the Netherlands accused in the case, Johanna Henrietta.
But when officials at her embassy in Cairo found that Netjes' Dutch fiscal number used for taxes - a number also listed in her passport - matched the passport number listed by Egyptian authorities, she realized the mistake.
"My baptismal name, Johanna Henrietta, is in my passport, Rena is not. I could see that they totally misspelled my name," said Netjes. When she discovered she had been swept up in the case and was now wanted by police, Netjes immediately went into hiding until she was able to flee the country a few days later.
Do monarch butterflies need space on the North American summit agenda?
Canada, Mexico, and the US seem on the verge of losing a great, mysterious natural migration. The number of monarchs returning to Mexico plummeted this winter.
No one knows over how many millennia monarch butterflies have made their epic migration from one end of North America to the other.
The mountainous winter home of the delicate orange and black creatures was only discovered in the oyamel forests of central Mexico in 1975. Twenty years later the feather-light insect was unofficially adopted as the symbol of the nascent North American Free Trade Agreement, since the monarch’s multi-generational trek, more than 2,500 miles long, takes the species to the three NAFTA countries.
But now Canada, Mexico, and the United States seem on the verge of losing one of the natural world’s great and mysterious migrations. The number of monarchs returning to Mexico, already in steady decline, plummeted this winter.
20 February 2014 Last updated at 08:41
North and South Koreans hold rare family reunions
Hundreds of North and South Korean relatives are seeing each other for the first time in decades, at a reunion for families separated by the Korean War.
More than 100 mostly elderly South Koreans arrived in the North on Thursday for the event.
The reunions, which come after North Korea called for better relations between the two sides, will take place from 20 to 25 February.
They come ahead of planned US-South Korea drills, which begin on Monday.
North Korea had earlier threatened to cancel the reunions if the military exercises went ahead.
Emotional scenes
On Thursday, 82 elderly South Koreans, accompanied by 58 family members, left for North Korea by bus.
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