A bomb killed 14 women and children at a graveyard in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday as the country celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, officials said.

Many Muslims visit the graves of deceased relatives during Eid as part of traditional celebrations after the holy month of fasting.

Thousands massed in Yangon Thursday to mark the anniversary of a bloody crackdown on Myanmar rallies 25 years ago, in a historic commemoration urging further democratic reform.

Some five thousand people crammed into a convention center and thousands more watched large television screens outside to witness a landmark ceremony recalling the huge 1988 student protests that were brutally crushed by the then-junta.

Families of some of the more than 50 sailors and fishermen held hostage by Somali pirates begged for their release Thursday, with some imprisoned now for more than two years.

"We are in desperate condition living with little hope to see our beloved soon," said the message from families of the crew of the MV Albedo, a Malaysian-flagged container ship with 15 sailors still held, from countries including Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

International flights landed at Nairobi airport Thursday morning, the first since a fire a day earlier gutted the arrivals terminal causing widespread chaos and delays, airport officials said.

The fire forced the cancellation or diversion of scores of flights at east Africa's biggest transport hub.

Satellite images suggest North Korea may have doubled uranium enrichment capacity at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex, a U.S. think-tank that tracks the North's nuclear weapons program said Thursday

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the images showed the building housing the gas centrifuge plant at Yongbyon had been expanded to twice its original size over the past four months.

Tokyo summoned Beijing's envoy on Thursday after Chinese government ships entered Japanese territorial waters near islands at the center of a bitter row between the Asian giants.

The Chinese vessels entered the area on Wednesday and were still there on Thursday morning, the foreign ministry said, marking the longest incursion since the long-simmering dispute erupted again last year.

President Barack Obama insisted Wednesday that al-Qaida's leaders were on the ropes, but admitted the threats that have closed U.S. embassies across the Middle East must be taken seriously.

His remarks to around 3,000 Marines at Camp Pendleton military base in California came after around 20 U.S. missions were shut in response to intelligence reports that an attack on U.S. interests could be imminent.

Osama Bin Laden's successor as the leader of al-Qaida has struggled to unite its various factions, a U.N. report said Wednesday, but the group remains an evolving threat.

The report, delivered to the U.N. Security Council by a group of experts, said al-Qaida's Egyptian leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri had failed to rebuild the group's core leadership in Pakistan.

A team of U.N. experts will head to Panama next week to inspect a North Korean ship impounded last month after the discovery of Cuban missile parts in its cargo.

Luxembourg's U.N. ambassador Sylvie Lucas announced the move on Wednesday.

A plane from Ireland made an emergency landing at the Philadelphia International Airport in the United States on Wednesday because of an unspecified threat, the Associated Press reported.

The AP said federal authorities were at the airport because of an apparent bomb threat.