A U.S. Congress panel on Thursday rejected a proposal to cut off all aid to Pakistan due to concerns over the country's relationship with Islamic militants after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee easily rejected the measure, with five lawmakers voting yes and 39 voting no. But the bill in its current form would still impose tighter controls over aid, making it contingent on measurable progress by Pakistan.

Al-Qaida-inspired insurgents abducted and detained Somalia's newly appointed women's minister Thursday while she was on her way to take up office, officials and witnesses told Agence France Presse.

Asha Osman Aqiil was named women and family affairs minister on Wednesday. She was kidnapped by the Shebab fighters in Balad town, some 30 kilometers north of the capital Mogadishu.

British forces have detained two British nationals in Afghanistan, authorities in London said Thursday, amid reports they were suspected of plotting against Britain or fighting with the Taliban.

"We can confirm that British forces have detained two individuals in Afghanistan who claim to be British nationals," the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

A bomb attack on Thursday killed at least two Pakistani oil workers in a remote town in the country's troubled southwest that borders Afghanistan and Iran, police and doctors said.

The blast hit a convoy of Pakistan's government-run Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDCL) in the mineral rich province of Baluchistan, where rebels are fighting for autonomy and demanding a greater share of natural resources.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said Thursday Australia's terror threat level would not change despite an image of Sydney's iconic Opera House appearing in an online magazine linked to al-Qaida.

The landmark building is featured in the latest edition of "Inspire", an English-language site that deals with bomb-making and terrorism.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has warned thousands of U.S. utility plants that they could be the targets of "violent extremists," according to a report Wednesday from ABC News.

On Tuesday the Department of Homeland Security sent out a terror alert titled "Insider Threat to Utilities" that said "violent extremists have, in fact, obtained insider positions" and might use those positions to wage physical and cyber attacks on behalf of al-Qaida, according to the news report.

A suicide bomber on a bicycle struck Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday, killing four Afghans in one of the country's safest cities poised to transition from NATO to local control.

The attack will likely fuel fears that putting Afghan security forces in control of seven different areas this week is happening too quickly, with violence at a record high in the decade-long Taliban insurgency.

A major 6.2 quake in Uzbekistan killed at least 13 people and injured 86 others, when it struck on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border in the remote Fergana Valley region, Uzbek officials said.

The quake struck at 1:35 am (1935 GMT Tuesday) with the epicenter just inside neighboring Kyrgyzstan but 42 kilometers southwest of the Uzbek city of Fergana, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Twelve million people in the drought-hit Horn of Africa region need emergency aid, the U.N. food agency said on Wednesday, appealing for $120 million to help desperate farmers.

"Around 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are currently in need of emergency assistance," the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement, adding that hundreds of people are dying every day in the crisis.

Serbia has arrested Goran Hadzic, the one-time Croatian Serb rebel leader who is the last remaining fugitive wanted by the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, government sources said Wednesday.

Serbian President Boris Tadic is expected to announce the arrest officially at a press conference at 11:00 am (09:00 GMT).