Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Mogadishu Friday for the first visit by a major leader in nearly two decades to witness the devastation wrought by a famine in the Somali capital.

Somalia is the country worst affected in the Horn of Africa by a prolonged drought that has been officially declared a famine by the United Nations in five regions in the country, including Mogadishu itself.

A U.S. drone strike targeting a house in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt on Friday killed at least four militants, local security officials said.

The unmanned aircraft fired two missiles, hitting a house in the Shin Warsak area of South Waziristan, part of the notorious tribal badlands that Washington calls a global headquarters of al-Qaida, the Pakistani officials told Agence France Presse.

At least 12 cars were torched in Berlin overnight Thursday to Friday, making it the fourth consecutive night such arson attacks have taken place, police said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed shock Thursday at these attacks, which officials attribute to apolitical vandalism.

Disaster-weary Japan was rattled by another strong quake Friday, which measured at a preliminary magnitude of 6.8, triggered a tsunami warning and sent people diving for cover.

The quake struck the Pacific seabed not far from the epicenter of the March 11 quake-tsunami disaster that killed more than 20,000 people and triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

A violent storm that lashed an outdoor rock music festival in northern Belgium killed at least five people after uprooting trees and collapsing two stages, local officials said.

Tens of thousands of people were attending the outdoor Pukkepop festival when the storm broke Thursday, toppling one stage on concert-goers at the annual event held in Kiewit near the town of Hasselt.

North Korea said Friday it would discuss with the United States the recovery of U.S. soldiers killed during the Korean War after a six year suspension.

Its foreign ministry spokesman said the North had accepted a U.S. proposal for talks on the resumption of the excavation of remains of American soldiers killed during the 1950-53 war.

The U.S. Army said Thursday it had awarded nearly $900 million in contracts to British arms manufacturer BAE Systems and U.S. firm General Dynamics to develop its next-generation ground combat vehicle.

The Pentagon said it had given $450 million to BAE and $440 million to General Dynamics to develop "competitive, affordable and executable designs for a new Army Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV)" over the next two years.

Eight people were killed as a wave of suicide explosions rocked a British cultural center in Kabul Friday, a public holiday marking Afghanistan's independence from Britain in 1919.

Five blasts, claimed by the Taliban, struck the British Council offices in Kabul amid bursts of heavy gunfire that began in the early morning and were ongoing four hours later. A fresh explosion hit the area at 10:00am (05:30 GMT).

A worsening food crisis affecting more than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa is unacceptable and should make the world feel ashamed, the head of the U.N. food agency said on Thursday.

"It is unacceptable for more than 12 million people to be at risk of starvation today," Jacques Diouf, head of the Food and Agriculture Organization, said at the start of a conference on the drought crisis in Rome.

London police are on the hunt for a new chief after a nightmare summer during which its boss quit over the phone-hacking scandal and the force was widely criticized for its failure to prevent riots.

A month after Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Stephenson and one of his deputies resigned in 24 hours, the deadline closed Wednesday for applications to become Britain's top police officer leading the country's biggest force.