“Militants struck across the Iraqi capital Wednesday, killing more than 50 people, including 32 in a suicide bombing that targeted pilgrims commemorating a revered Shiite saint, Iraqi police said.

The attacks — the deadliest of which occurred in northern Baghdad’s predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah — offered a clear indication of the push by insurgents to exploit Iraq’s political vacuum and destabilize the country as U.S. troops head home.

Police said the bloody suicide bombing that killed 32 and wounded more than 90 people, split the hot Wednesday evening air as Shiite pilgrims were about to cross a bridge leading to the a shrine in the Shiite Kazimiyah neighborhood where a revered imam is buried.

“Federal prosecutors say the failed plot to set off bombs in the New York subway last year was part of a larger al-Qaida conspiracy that also targeted England.

In a terrorism indictment unsealed Wednesday, prosecutors added several al-Qaida figures to the case, including Adnan Shukrijumah, an FBI most-wanted terrorist.

Attorney General Eric Holder has called the thwarted New York plot one of the most dangerous since 9/11.

Two of the men indicted Wednesday, Abid Naseer and Tariq Ur Rehman, were linked to a companion plot in London.”

(Source: The Associated Press: US: NYC subway bomb plot linked to British cell)

“A shootout near the U.S.-Mexico border between rival groups with ties to organized crime left 21 people dead Thursday, Mexican police officials said.

Two groups authorities believe were involved in drug and human trafficking clashed in a deserted area about 12 miles south of the border, Sonora State Police spokesman Jose Larrinaga Talamantes told CNN.

“A man with five cans of gas and an array of weapons in his car was arrested Thursday near the G-20 site in Toronto, security officials said.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman Sgt. Marc LaPorte said the 53-year-old driver had pellet guns, a crossbow, gas tanks and chemical products in his car, and couldn’t explain why those items were there.

“In the latest of a series of attacks on the Turkish military, a remote-controlled bomb killed 5 people and wounded 15 on a busy highway in Istanbul early Tuesday, the governor’s office announced.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, Turkish news reports suggested that the attack might have been carried out by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an armed separatist group seeking autonomy in southeastern Turkey that the authorities here, along with the United States and the European Union, consider a terrorist organization. The group has been fighting the Turkish state since the 1980s, and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.