Dutch prosecutors are to charge the suspect in a gun attack in a packed Utrecht tram with "terrorist" killings, saying he will appear for the first time before a judge on Friday.

Four mosques in the central English city of Birmingham have been attacked overnight, with a man wielding a sledgehammer seen smashing windows at two places of worship, the police said on Thursday.

Counter-terrorism officers are investigating attacks on the mosques in four different areas in the north of the city, West Midlands Police said in a statement.

The Pakistan military said in a statement on Thursday that it had rescued four Iranian soldiers being held captive by a militant group in the country's restive southwest.

A Dutch populist party will be the joint biggest in the senate and strip Prime Minister Mark Rutte of his majority following elections that came just days after a suspected terror attack, local media said Thursday.

A "meteor" that tore across the Los Angeles skyline set Twitter alight with speculation it was a real life "Deep Impact".

A bright orange fireball that arced over Hollywood -- home of countless disaster movies -- sent people scrambling to capture the scene for social media -- even if it later turned out to be more fiction than fact.

At least six people were killed by blasts in Kabul Thursday during Persian New Year celebrations in a Shiite area of the Afghan capital, authorities said, in the latest violence to hit the war-torn city.

Boeing's ill-fated 737 MAX and federal regulators next week will face the first public grilling by Congress over the two fatal plane crashes in recent months.

Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, called for a hearing of the Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation and Space, for March 27, with three transportation officials, notably the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday welcomed some "moderation" in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's comments in the wake of the Christchurch massacre.

Trying to take the sting out of a diplomatic row that has threatened relations between Australia, New Zealand and Turkey, Morrison pointed to a recent Erdogan column in the Washington Post as progress.

On the outskirts of the southern Serbian town of Surdulica a black cross looms above a grave covered in a tangle of weeds. 

This is the final resting place of some of the hundreds of civilians killed by the NATO air attacks launched 20 years ago this Sunday, a tragedy survivors feel is as forgotten as the overgrown burial ground.

For decades, his land was his life. Now, like other Sunni Arab farmers in Iraq's diverse north, Mahdi Abu Enad is cut off from his fields, fearing reprisal attacks.