Pakistani officials have announced the end of a hostage standoff at a prison in the restive tribal region near the Afghan border, with all 33 hostage-takers dead.

At least two policemen were killed and many others injured when Pakistani Taliban militants seized a counter-terrorism centre and took some people hostage in the Bannu district of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Israel, the world’s eighth-largest nuclear power, initiated its nuclear program in 1952 with technological support from France and the US, the two countries most vocal about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

A secretly recorded footage purportedly shows the daughter of Dubai’s ruler, held against her will in a barricaded villa.

The kidnapping occurred during a weekly market in the village of Farabougou, near the central Malian town of Niono.