Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks said on Friday it had published its full cache of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, which could be accessed through an Internet link without a password.

"RELEASE CABLEGATE2: 251,287 U.S. embassy cables in searchable format," said a message on WikiLeaks' Twitter account.

Taliban militants have kidnapped more than 30 Pakistani boys who had mistakenly crossed the unmarked border in the country's lawless northwest into Afghanistan

They said the incident took place on Thursday after the group of boys, aged between 12 and 18-years-old, visited the area of Gharkhi in Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region for celebrations marking the Muslim Eid holiday.

Turkey has agreed to host an early warning radar as part of NATO's missile defense system aimed at countering ballistic missile threats from neighboring Iran, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Friday.

A ministry statement emailed to journalists said discussions on NATO-member Turkey's contribution to the alliance missile defense shield had reached "their final stages."

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard dismissed mounting speculation Friday about her future, vowing to stay in the job despite a crushing court blow to the government's asylum-seeker policy.

The nation's highest court on Wednesday scuttled Canberra's proposal to send 800 boat people to Malaysia, in a huge embarrassment for Gillard and her fragile Labor government, sparking fevered talk that her days are numbered.

A passenger miraculously survived when a light plane nosedived into the sea off Sydney on Friday after onlookers plunged into the choppy ocean to rescue him.

The pilot was killed in the crash just off a northern Sydney beach despite two policemen stripping off their uniforms and swimming to the wreckage to try and find him.

Iran urged French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday not to make comments based on "unrealistic information," after Paris called for tougher sanctions over Tehran's controversial nuclear program.

"As stated repeatedly, Iran's nuclear activity is completely peaceful and International Atomic Energy Agency reports have confirmed it," state television quoted the foreign ministry's head of western Europe affairs as saying.

Gunmen killed seven people, four from the same family, in an ambush on a vehicle in Pakistan's tribal northwest on Thursday, in a possible sectarian attack, officials said.

The vehicle carrying eight passengers was on its way from the town of Ali Zai in Lower Kurram to Parachinar as the nation celebrated the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, local administration chief Javedullah Khan told Agence France Presse.

Two blasts and a shooting in Russia's turbulent North Caucasus region killed four people and injured five, officials said Thursday.

The local police chief in Baksan, a town in Kabardino-Balkaria, died when unidentified assailants attacked his car on Wednesday evening.

Three Pakistani soldiers were killed and one Indian trooper was hurt in an exchange of fire by the rival militaries across their sensitive border in divided Kashmir, authorities said Thursday.

Both sides accused each other of starting the hostilities in the first deadly incident across the de facto border in the Himalayan region in more than three months.

Japan on Thursday conducted its first national earthquake drill since the March 11 disasters that left 20,000 dead or missing and triggered a nuclear crisis.

Police supervised traffic at some 100 points in central Tokyo while passengers were guided to safe zones from train stations in a simulation of a post-quake scenario in which all rail and subway services are suspended.