Three American friends who overpowered a heavily-armed gunman in a train poured cold water on his claim that he had no intention of waging a bloody attack.
French investigators were interrogating a man who was overpowered by three young Americans after he opened fire with a Kalashnikov on a trainbetween Amsterdam and Paris.
Pakistan's army announced the death penalty for six militants linked to an assault on a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar that killed 151 people.
A truck bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 54 people in a Shiite-majority area of Baghdad, the deadliest single attack in Iraq's capital in months.
A suspected Islamic State suicide bomber killed at least 31 people in an attack on a Turkish cultural centre where activists had gathered to prepare for an aid mission in the nearby Syrian town of Kobane.
France has foiled a plan to attack the country's military, the interior minister said, as a source close to the investigation said the suspects had been planning a beheading.
Kuwait's parliament, reacting to a suicide bombing last week that killed 26 people, adopted a law requiring mandatory DNA testing on all the country's citizens and foreign residents.
The global terrorist threat has entered a "new phase," where media-savvy Islamist extremists are successfully drawing lone wolf attackers to their cause.
French President vowed to introduce tougher penalties for "racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic" remarks in the wake of last month's militant attacks in Paris.
The Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris were a "wake-up event" for freedom of expression, movie legend Robert Redford said as he launched the Sundance Film Festival.
French intelligence did not prevent the Paris attacks despite benefitting from "most intrusive" surveillance laws because suspects are "buried under data".