Ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria claimed 16 more victims Tuesday, with gunmen killing eight in the north and a mob torching an Islamic school in the south, as a fuel strike added to the deadly tension. Amid the sectarian and social turmoil, Nobel literature prize laureate Wole Soyinka, one of the country's most respected voices, warned that the continent's most populous nation was heading toward civil war. A two-day old general strike has …

Members of North Korea's powerful military have held a rally to pledge loyalty to the country's new leader Kim Jong-Un, vowing to become "rifles and bombs" to protect him, official media said Tuesday. Service members promised to "become rifles and bombs to serve as Kim Jong-Un first-line lifeguards and Kim Jong-Un first-line death-defying corps", the official KCNA news agency said. The regime has moved quickly to proclaim the untested Jung-Un, …

The home of a Mapuche Indian leader in Chile was destroyed in a suspicious blaze Sunday in an area ravaged by forest fires, which officials say may have been caused by radical indigenous activists. Police said hooded assailants also torched the home of a retired military officer and fired at officers in the forest region of Araucania, as seven firefighters killed there last week in a massive wildfire were buried Sunday. Jose Santos Millao, who …

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera invoked anti-terror legislation Thursday after at least six firefighters died in a wildfire he believes was started deliberately. An unusually hot and dry start to the Chilean summer has seen more than 50 wildfires, fanned by high winds, burn down scores of homes and destroy some 50,000 hectares (123,000 acres) of woodland and brush over the past 10 days. Authorities suspect several fires that erupted almost simultaneously …

International scientists said on Tuesday they had found signs of the Higgs boson, an elementary sub-atomic particle believed to have played a vital role in the creation of the universe after the Big Bang. Peter Higgs, the 82-year-old British theoretical physicist who first proposed the existence of the particle in 1964 as the missing link of a grand theory of matter and energy, was watching the announcement on a webcast with colleagues at Edinburgh …

A mineral brought back to Earth by the first men on the Moon and long thought to be unique to the lunar surface has been found in Australian rocks more than one billion years old, scientists said Thursday. Named after Apollo 11's 1969 landing site at the Sea of Tranquility, tranquillityite was one of three minerals first discovered in rocks from the Moon and the only one not to be found, in subsequent years, on Earth. Australian scientist Birger …

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar has confirmed opening peace talks with the US authorities, Geo News reported on Thursday. Mullah Omar made two demands - release of Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay detention facility and complete pull out of US-led forces from Afghanistan. However, the US state department said that no decision had yet been made on releasing the Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison.

North Korean troops shot dead three countrymen who were trying to cross the border into China, a Seoul activist said Tuesday, as Pyongyang tightens border controls after the death of leader Kim Jong-Il. Border guards last Saturday killed the men in their 40s who were crossing the Yalu river from the northern border city of Hyesan, said Do Hee-Youn, who helps refugees from the North. "People waiting at the Chinese side across the river to help the …

The Registrar of the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) Jamshoro informed here Monday to teaching faculty members that winter vacation of the university will be start from December 28 and end on January 5, 2012. Those faculty member who have not completed one year of their service as well as the contract employees basis and all in-service and private postgraduate students are not eligible to avail the winter vacation, he said.

A popular US national park will remain closed Monday as police hunt a gunman who shot and killed a federal ranger before fleeing into the forest, authorities said late Sunday. A major manhunt launched immediately after the New Year's Day shooting in Mount Rainier National Park failed to find the suspect by nightfall, which hampered efforts to track him amid sub-zero temperatures. Local media named the suspect as Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, who …