Officials in northwestern Pakistan say a suicide bomber has killed at least 16 other people at a military checkpoint. They said two of the dead were Pakistani security officials. The attack took place in the Bajaur tribal region near the Afghan border.
Britain has temporarily suspended student visa applications from northern India, Nepal and Bangladesh because of concerns of a possible abuse of the system. British officials say in the last three months of last year, there were 13,500 applications from northern India alone, seven times as many as a year earlier. Chris Morris reports.
British officials say the system has been overwhelmed, and there is clearly concern about how many of the applications are genuine. Unscrupulous agents offering student visas as a way of settling in the UK are not uncommon. The British High Commissioner in Delhi Sir Richard Stagg said abuse of the system would not be allowed to happen. So while extra checks take place, visa applications have been temporarily suspended, a decision which will be reviewed at the end of February.
Shia rebels in northern Yemen have said they'll accept the government's conditions for a ceasefire once the Yemeni army has stopped its offensive against them. The rebels' leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said in an audio message posted on the Internet that further attacks against his groups wouldn't achieve any useful political result, and that it was now up to the Yemeni government to respond.