Tunisia attack: Gunmen storm museum, kill 17 foreign tourists

Gunmen wearing military uniforms stormed Tunisia's national museum on Wednesday, killing 17 foreign tourists and two Tunisians in one of the worst militant attacks in a country that had largely escaped the region's "Arab Spring" turmoil.

Five Japanese as well as visitors from Italy, Germany, Poland and Spain were among the dead in the noon assault on Bardo museum inside the heavily guarded parliament compound in central Tunis, Prime Minister Habib Essid said.

"They just started opening fire on the tourists as they were getting out of the buses ... I couldn't see anything except blood and the dead," the driver of a tourist coach told journalists at the scene.

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US drone kills suspected mastermind of Kenya mall massacre

A US drone strike in southern Somalia has killed Adnan Garaar, an Al-Shabaab leader believed to be the mastermind of a 2013 attack on a Kenyan shopping mall that killed 67 people, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

It said in a statement that the strike last Thursday hit a vehicle carrying Garaar, a top official of the Al-Shabaab militant group, which the Pentagon says targets US and other Western interests to further Al-Qaeda's goals.

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Climate: Amazon forest losing carbon-storing capacity

The Amazonian rainforest has lost much of its ability to absorb climate-altering greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, scientists reported on Wednesday.

In the 1990s, the great forest was able to store as much as two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) each year, they said. Now, though, the uptake has halved, and for the first time is being outstripped by fossil-fuel emissions from Latin America.

The scientists found a worrying surge in the rate of trees dying across the Amazon.

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Britain's Kate due to give birth 'mid-to-end of April'

Prince William's wife Kate revealed she is due to give birth to her second child by the "mid-to-end of April," on a visit to a children's centre on Wednesday.

She let the information slip while chatting to a volunteer at the centre in south-east London, run by a charity working with young families.

Kate is already mother to 18-month-old Prince George, the third in line to the throne.

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Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen quitting catwalk

Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, the world's highest-earning model for the past eight years, is retiring from the catwalk at age 34, 20 years after her debut, her spokeswoman said Wednesday.

"Gisele will focus on special projects and also spending more time on her number one priority: her family," said her sister and representative Patricia Bundchen in a statement.

Bundchen posted a message to her official Facebook account thanking fans for their support and telling them, "Thank you for all the love. A kiss in your heart and have a beautiful day!!!!"

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