Jury deliberations will enter a second day Thursday on whether to sentence Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death or life without parole, for carrying out one of the worst attacks in America since September 11.

The 12 men and women, who last month convicted the 21-year-old of Chechen descent on all charges relating to the April 15, 2013 bombings, must reach a unanimous verdict if they are to sentence him to death.

North Korea's recent test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile was probably genuine but almost certainly exaggerated, and did not present the imminent threat promoted by Pyongyang, weapons experts and analysts said Thursday.

Reaffirming suspicions that last Friday's exercise was an "ejection" test rather than a full-scale test, the experts said the North was still likely in the early stages of developing a credible SLBM capability.

Fourteen people, most of them foreigners, were killed in a Taliban attack on a Kabul guesthouse that trapped dozens attending a concert and triggered an hours-long standoff with Afghan forces, officials said Thursday.

Four Indians, two Pakistanis, an American, an Italian and a British-Afghan dual national were among those killed in the overnight siege on the Park Palace, which was about to host a performance by a well-known Afghan singer.

The engineer of a U.S. passenger train that was traveling at more than 100 miles per hour -- twice the approved speed -- slammed on the emergency brakes just before a deadly derailment in Philadelphia, investigators said Wednesday.

The driver engaged in a "full emergency brake application" moments before the derailment, but the train speed only decreased by a few miles per hour, Robert Sumwalt of the National Transportation Safety Board told reporters.

Beijing expressed anger Wednesday after reports the United States was considering ramping up its military presence in disputed South China Sea waters and confronting Chinese territorial claims with ships and aircraft.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter asked staff to explore sending Navy surveillance aircraft and vessels to islands which Washington believes have been rapidly built up by China in recent months, the Wall Street Journal said Tuesday, citing officials.

North Korea launched live-fire drills near the disputed sea border with South Korea late Wednesday, the Yonhap news agency reported, amid high tensions over Pyongyang's recent submarine-launched ballistic missile test.

The reported firing drills -- some shot from a war ship -- came just hours after Pyongyang informed South Korea of its plans to conduct the exercise.

Two heavily armed Taliban gunmen stormed a mosque in southern Afghanistan Wednesday, officials said, killing at least six people in a fight with security forces that lasted several hours and ended with their deaths.

The incident took place in Lashkar Gah, the capital of the volatile poppy-rich province of Helmand, the latest attack in the militants' annual spring offensive that they have waged since being ousted from power in late 2001.

A senior Iranian commander warned the United States that a "fire might start" over an aid ship bound for Yemen on Wednesday after the Pentagon urged it to change course.

Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said it was Iran's right to deliver relief supplies to Yemen as a humanitarian ceasefire takes hold and rejected Washington's request that aid be taken instead to a United Nations hub to allay worries the cargo might be military.

Five people were found shot dead in a home in Arizona in a possible murder-suicide, local media reported.

The adult victims appeared to have died sometime Tuesday in the city of Tucson, the Arizona Daily Star said.

A U.S. F-18 fighter jet crashed in the Gulf after taking off from an aircraft carrier on Tuesday but both crew members survived without major injuries, military officers said Tuesday.

The Super Hornet aircraft had launched from the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Gulf at 1330 GMT before it went down, the US Navy said in a statement.