Globe Trot: Pakistan's violence reaches all-time high

PAKISTAN: Terrorist violence is at an all-time high—2,500 Pakistanis killed in 2013 alone. That’s more than those killed between 2005 and 2007. Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s David Griffiths, writing in The Wall Street Journal, offers a remedy: The state can do more. End hate material in text books. Condemn attacks and arrest attackers.

UN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly yesterday when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, world leaders should “distrust, dismantle, and verify.”

ITALY:Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s coalition government survived near collapse today when Silvio Berlusconi, the scandal-prone, four-time prime minister currently sentenced (and on appeal) for tax fraud, made an about-face and decided to support him. Berlusconi’s defection, pulling ministers from Letta’s government and staging a no-confidence vote, nearly failed because of defections within his own party. Could this (finally) be the beginning of the end for the center-right billionaire, who has controlled Italian politics for two decades?

KENYA: The al-Shabaab killing spree at Westgate Mall centered on Nakumatt grocery store, battering one of Africa's homegrown corporate success stories and setting back a rising economy.

SYRIA: The head of Aleppo’s Evangelical Church has called on world leaders to take a clear stand against Syrian rebels burning churches and raising Islamic flags above them in the northern city of Reka, the first provincial capital to fall to rebels, in March 2012.

BOOKS: Tom Clancy, author of Cold War-era thrillers, has died.