Pakistan mourns park attack on Lahore Christians
People in Pakistan are mourning the deaths of more than 70 people including 29 children in a suicide attack in a Lahore park.
The regional government announced three days of mourning, with one day declared in other parts of Pakistan.
Taliban splinter group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said it carried out the attack and targeted Christians celebrating Easter.
At least 300 people were injured, with officials saying they expected the death toll to rise.
The area was more crowded than usual, as Lahore's minority Christians had gathered to celebrate Easter at a funfair in the park.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited some of the injured in hospital and has met security officials to plan a response.
Isis leaves Palmyra 'like city of ghosts' after being driven from strategic stronghold by Syrian forces
Residents said Isis had evacuated all of Palmyra's civilians to other territories under its control
The ancient city of Palmyra is "like a city of ghosts" after Syrian government forces drove Isis militants from the strategic stronghold.
Residential neighbourhoods in the adjacent modern towns were found deserted. Residents told The Associated Press Isis had evacuated all of Palmyra's civilians to other territories under its control.
"It was like a city of ghosts, we did not see a single family in the town," one of the first journalists to see the liberated city told BBC Radio 4.
"It's not completely clear, but it's understood Isis forced the residents out of the town and forced them to flee with them."
Japan expands surveillance in East China Sea
Japan's military has opened a monitoring station on a contested island group in the East China Sea. The move has not gone down well in China and Taiwan.
Japan's defense ministry will keep a unit of 160 troops on the island of Yanaguni, which is only about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Taiwan, to monitor vessels and aircraft in the region.
"This is kind of a power vacuum area," according to Colonel Masashi Yamamoto, military attache with the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C.
The new Self Defense Force base on Yonaguni is at the western extreme of a string of Japanese islands in the East China Sea, 150 km south of the disputed islands, which are known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.
Family members detained as backlash over open letter intensifies
China has detained the family members of two Chinese writers based overseas as it seeks to crack down on those responsible for an anonymous letter calling for the resignation of President Xi Jinping.
Wen Yunchao and Chang Ping said close relatives had been taken by Chinese authorities. They both denied being involved with the publication of the mysterious letter, which was published earlier this month before being quickly taken down.
"My family members are missing, and more others are being harassed and threatened, I feel anxious," Wen, a Chinese activist based in New York, told CNN.
Iran’s Executions and Human Rights Abuses Hit 27 year high- Iran Lord of Executions
Dr. Majid RafizadehPresident of the International American Council
The Islamic Republic hit the highest rate of executing people since 1989. The official number indicates that Iran executed nearly two times more people in 2015 in comparison to 2010 when the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in office, as well as roughly 10 times more than the number of executions in 2005.
Approximately 1000 people were executed in 2015, according to the latest report from the United Nations investigator, Ahmed Shaheed, the special rapporteur for human rights in Iran. The unofficial number is higher.
The peak of the executions in 2015 was between April and June in which nearly 4 people were executed every day on average. Most of the executions were carried out in prisons located in urban areas such as Ghezel Hesar and Rajai Shahr in Karaj, and Adel Abad in Shiraz.
ERIK PRINCE, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.
What began as an investigation into Prince’s attempts to sell defense services in Libya and other countries in Africa has widened to a probe of allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, is also seeking to uncover the precise nature of Prince’s relationship with Chinese intelligence.
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