A British woman held in a Pakistani jail with her baby was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for trying to smuggle heroin worth £3.2m (NZD$6m) out of the country.

The Pakistani Taliban have chosen the ruthless commander who planned the attack on teenage activist Malala Yousafzai as the militant group's new leader, and it ruled out holding peace talks with the government.

A car bomb ripped through a crowded street in Peshawar's oldest bazaar, killing 40 people in the third blast to hit the troubled city in a week, officials said.

Separatist militants fired two rockets that narrowly missed a Pakistani government helicopter surveying a region devastated by an earthquake, underscoring the dangers authorities face in helping victims in Baluchistan.

Survivors built makeshift shelters with sticks and bedsheets after their mud houses were flattened in an earthquake that killed 348 people.

Alongside the carnage of Pakistan's massive earthquake came a new creation: a small island of mud, stone and bubbling gas pushed forth from the seabed.

Militants in Pakistan's most populous province are said to be training for what they expect will be an ethnic-based civil war in neighbouring Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw in 16 months, according to analysts and a senior militant.

The world's most perilous peak will be the final resting place for a New Zealand father and son who were attempting to scale it.

A man believed to have died with his son while climbing the world's second highest mountain, K2 inspired a generation of Hawke's Bay people to embrace the outdoors.

A NZ father and son's tent has been found wrecked and vital climbing tools left abandoned, confirming fears they have been swept away and killed in an avalanche.

A teenager wounded alongside the campaigning schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai has condemned the Pakistan Taliban's letter of regret as a "pack of lies".

A Taliban commander has written to Malala Yousafzai, telling her she was shot for being critical of the Taliban - not because she championed girls' education.

The sound of footsteps and gunfire was coming closer where Osama bin Laden, his youngest wife Amal and one of his daughters must have known their life was reaching its end.

Imran Khan has suffered a head injury after falling 5m from a platform lift as it carried him on to a stage for an election rally.

Gunmen have killed the lead Pakistani prosecutor in two high-profile cases shocking a country reeling from Taliban attacks as it prepares for nationwide elections.

Christian communities across Pakistan have launched angry protests after a Muslim mob set fire to a Christian neighbourhood in Lahore.

Under police guard, thousands of health workers pressed on with a polio immunisation program after nine were killed elsewhere in Pakistan by suspected militants who oppose the vaccination campaign.