GERMANY: A van packed with migrants crashed at a highway junction in southern Germany on Friday after the driver accelerated to avoid a police check, killing seven people and injuring 16, authorities said.

The people on board the van were Syrian and Turkish citizens.

KOREA: North Korea lashed out Friday at the arrival of a US navy carrier strike group in South Korea, calling it a provocation and again raising the spectre of using nuclear weapons to defend itself.

The USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group arrived at South Korea’s south-eastern port of Busan, following joint US-South Korean-Japanese naval exercise earlier this week.

AFGHANISTAN: A blast struck a Shi-ite mosque during Friday prayers in Afghanistan’s north, a police spokesperson said. 

He confirmed there were casualties but did not give a figure or other details about the incident.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but blame is likely to fall on the Islamic State group, which targeted Afghanistan’s minority Shi-ites in past large-scale attacks.

UNITED STATES: The hosts of a popular left-wing US radio show, By Any Means Necessary, were told on Thursday that they had been sacked and their show taken off the air.

In a statement the shows hosts, Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman, said the actions had been taken by the station Radio Sputnik because of the “principled position in support of the just cause of the Palestinian people to oppose apartheid and colonialism.”

They added: “These values are more important to us than any job could be.”