A suicide bomber detonated explosives Thursday inside a French-funded school in Kabul during a play that condemns suicide attacks, leading to deaths and numerous injuries, the French foreign minister said.

At Fusahiro Shimojima's workshop, in the industrial city of Saitama, fires rage in small pits and an earthen floor absorbs the din of hammering. The 44-year-old Japanese swordsmith pounds the nascent blade of his newest creation, sending molten sparks flying majestically into air.

A group of armed insurgents has stormed the Kabul Bank in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, a spokesman for the provincial governor said Wednesday.

An Indonesian maid has told a Hong Kong court that she was tortured for six months by her former employer, who shoved a vacuum cleaner tube into her mouth, breaking teeth and tearing her mouth.

For the first time since she was attacked two years ago, the world can now see the uniform that teenager Malala Yousafzai wore when she was shot in the head by the Taliban.