“Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the army to seal off the West Bank for 48 hours and tightened security around the old city of Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Friday.

One Palestinian was injured in the old city after Israeli police restricted worshipers from entering the Al Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers.

“Twin blasts rocked Lahore today, hitting a high-security military district and killing at least 39 people.

Unconfirmed reports put the death toll at up to 50, while more than 95 people were injured.

The attacks, close to each other, struck a busy market inside the Lahore cantonment, home of the local army garrison. The suicide attackers appeared to target passing army vehicles, with six soldiers reportedly among the dead.

“On Christmas Day, a passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit tried to blow up the plane with plastic explosives in his underwear. He failed, yet the very attempt shook the U.S. government, set federal agencies against each other and triggered months of political second-guessing.

In fact, short of mass casualties, the attack allegedly attempted by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had exactly the kind of reaction that al-Qaida is after. And, it appears, that lesson is resonating with the terror network’s leadership.

For the first time, the group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and has prided itself on its ideological purism seems to be eyeing a more pragmatic and arguably more dangerous shift in tactics. The emerging message appears to be: Big successes are great, but sometimes simply trying can be just as good.

“Thailand’s seemingly unending political crisis is likely to reach another moment of tension this weekend with huge opposition rallies that organizers say they hope will paralyze the city and bring down the government.

While pledging nonviolence, protest leaders say they will gather hundreds of thousands of mostly rural supporters for mass rallies and blockades of government offices, starting on Friday and building over the following days.

“Six Pakistani employees of the American Christian charity World Vision were gunned down Wednesday, and seven others were wounded in an attack on the aid group’s offices in a remote village in northern Pakistan. “

Pakistani authorities said about a dozen masked militants stormed the building at about 9:30 a.m., pulled the staff members out of their offices and herded them into a single room, then started shooting indiscriminately. The attackers set off a bomb as they left, destroying the offices, which are located in North-West Frontier Province, in the village of Oghi, near the disputed region of Kashmir.