Islamist gunmen are suspected to be behind the attack at a college in Nigeria’s northeast that killed as many as 50 students.

The students were shot and killed while they slept inside their dorms at the Yobe State College of Agriculture. Nigeria’s northeast is in a state of emergency amidst an insurgency by Islamists from the Boko Haram group.

The Boko Haram is attempting to overthrow the government in Nigeria to form an Islamic state and many attacks have been launched at different schools.

Casualties from Saturday’s attack vary. However, one local politician told reporters that more than 50 students were shot and killed. The Nigerian politician said the dead bodies filled two vans.

Another witness was quoted by a news agency as saying that 40 bodies were at the hospital, most of which were young men thought to be students.

The provost of the college said that the death toll could pass the 50 mark, adding that the local authorities were still collecting dead bodies and that over 1,000 students fled campus.

The gunmen, after shooting the students, set fire to some of the classrooms at the school, said a spokesperson for the military. The school is located in the rural district of Gujba,

This past May, Goodluck Jonathan, the President of Nigeria ordered troops to attack Boko Haram and on May 14, he declared a state of emergency for the country’s northeast.

Many of the militants from Boko Harem left their locations in the country’s northeast after that military action and violence dropped initially, but revenge attacks followed quickly.

Boko Haram, in June, attacked schools twice in the area. In one, nine children died when a school was attacked near Maiduguri, and 13 teachers and students died in a Damaturu school.

In July, in the state of Yobe, Islamists attacked the dormitories of a school and killed 42 people with explosives and guns.

The powerful earthquake that hit Tuesday in the southwestern region of Pakistan has now claimed over 325 lives. Officials said they have found areas where hundreds of homes built out of mud collapsed with people inside in the thinly populated remote areas of the region.

Hundreds of army soldiers were air lifted to help in the aftermath of the country’s worst earthquake since 2005. In that quake, more than 75,000 people lost their lives in the northern part of the country.

The earthquake on Tuesday was a magnitude 7.7 and hit Baluchistan, a large province that is prone to earthquakes, which has rugged mountains and large deserts. Most of Southern Asia felt the quake.

The quake destroyed many homes and cut off communications with Awaran, the district that was most affected and was so strong it created a tiny island to form just off the coast of Pakistan in the Arabian Sea.

In the Awaran district alone, more than 285 bodies were recovered said the district’s deputy commissioner. The town has a population of approximately 200,000.

In the district of Kech, near Awaran, another 42 bodies had been found, said authorities.

The national disaster authority in Pakistan said the death toll was 259 by Wednesday evening, but others said it was much higher.

Rescue groups found it difficult to reach many remote locations and some authorities said the loss of life would increase, as workers were able to reach areas that were further up in the mountains and assess all the damage.

A local journalist described seeing chaos and grief in small villages, saying those who survived were digging graves.

He said as far as he could see in the distance, all the houses had been flattened by the quake.

Tuesday’s quake hit when Pakistanis were still mourning the loss of life of over 80 Christians from a Sunday attack by a suicide bomber in an Anglican Church in Peshawar.

A member of the Pussy Riot Russian punk band who is currently jailed has announced she would start a hunger strike Monday. She is protesting what she calls the “slave labor” that takes place in the penal colony she is in. She also said a senior official at her prison had given her a death threat.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova received a sentence of two years in prison in August of 2012. She was sentenced after she took part in a punk prayer inside a cathedral in Moscow. The prayer was in protest against Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia.

Her announcement said she would start her hunger strike on Monday September 23 and would refuse to participate in the colony’s slave labor as well. She said her strike would continue until the laws are obeyed by the administration and it stops treating women who are incarcerated like cattle.

The band member is in the Mordovia region in Penal Colony 14, located to the southeast of Moscow. She and her fellow inmates have been forced to work 17 hours daily sewing uniforms for police.

She said the workers sleep for no more than four hours each night and that officials at the prison used some senior inmates to maintain order, in what is reminiscent of the Gulags during the Soviet era, which were nothing more that forced labor camps.

She said increasing quotas for production, collective punishment and violence against those failing to deliver were commonplace inside the colony, where she described their living conditions as failing to meet the standards of human rights and the laws in Russia.

Tolokonnikova has asked the federal arm of the prisons, to investigate a death threat she says she received from a senior official in the prison.

Her accusation did not provoke any comments from administrators at the penal colony and regional officials for Mordovia were not immediately available for comment.

An Arizona mother of seven is currently being detained in a Mexican jail, amidst allegations that she smuggled 12 pounds of marijuana, which her family is denying.

A Mexican state official also believe that you Yanira Maldonado, the mother in custody, was framed.

This Tuesday, Maldonado will find out whether she will walk free or remain in jail until her trial.

Her daughter, Anna Soto said during an interview with CNN, “She’s innocent. She’s an honest good woman, a Christian woman that would never do anything to jeopardize her freedom.”

Maldonado was arrested last Wednesday as she and her husband were on the way back from a family funeral on a bus. During a search at a military checkpoint in the northwestern section of the Mexican state of Sonara, everyone was asked to get off the bus. It was then that they told Maldonado they had found a large stash of marijuana underneath her seat.

A Sonora state official with knowledge of the case said there were so many questions about the arrest. He said, “Can you imagine? A passenger by himself or herself would have been unable to carry almost 6 kg of marijuana onto a bus without being noticed. She must’ve been framed.”

The husband was told by authorities that no matter whether she was guilty or innocent, he would still have to pay a fine of $5000 to secure her freedom. The husband was able to get the money together but eventually was told it was too late and his wife had already been transferred to another jail.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is monitoring the case, and his office stated that, “Sen. Flake is personally monitoring the situation and he has had multiple conversations with the deputy Mexican ambassador this weekend.”

A family member says that the family has hired a lawyer in Mexico but they are still very worried as they do not fully understand the local legal system.

A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday where the judge will make the decision whether or not to release Maldonado or keep her in custody for another four months while she awaits trial.

A local lawyer has also informed the family that Maldonado can request a 72 hour extension which will delay that decision and give them more time to prepare.

Maldonado’s brother-in-law said, “We are worried that Yanira may not know that she’s the one that needs to request this. If they don’t extend the 72 hours, the judge will make a decision whether she can go free tomorrow or will be transported to a prison in south Mexico.”