In India, a Pakistani national convicted for his role in the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai has been sentenced to death. He was the only gunman who was captured alive during the daring assaults that killed 166 people in India's financial hub.

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab wiped his face and held his head in his hands as a special court in Mumbai pronounced the death penalty on four counts - murder, waging war against India, conspiracy and terrorism offenses.

Twenty-two-year-old Kasab is the only one who survived out of ten heavily armed gunmen who arrived by sea and mounted attacks on multiple targets in Mumbai in November 2008. Indian authorities say he was a member of the Pakistan-based Islamic militant group, the Laskhar-e-Taiba, which India believes masterminded the attacks.

Kasab and an accomplice killed and wounded scores at the city's main train station.

Pronouncing the sentence, the judge said Kasab's offenses were "of exceptional depravity", and he had lost right to humanitarian treatment. He said the death penalty was necessary to maintain the people's faith in the judicial system.

Mumbai Police Commissioner Himanshu Roy, who was present in the court, says the judge explained that the punishment is in proportion to the crime.

"While imposing the death sentence, he said there was a preponderance of overwhelming circumstances which made the death punishment inevitable, and that there were hardly any mitigating circumstances," said Roy.

The death penalty on Kasab can only be executed once it is confirmed by a high court. There could also be an appeal against it - a process that could take years as it winds its way slowly to the highest court.

In Mumbai - the city which was traumatized by the terror attacks - many people said they were satisfied by the sentence. Several family members of victims of the attacks appeared on domestic television saying they supported the death penalty for Kasab.

The prosecution, which had called Kasab a "killing machine" said the judgment will put balm on the wounds of the victims of the terror attacks. The defense had argued against capital punishment, saying Kasab was brainwashed into committing the offenses.

Indian courts rarely use the death penalty, which is reserved for what the Supreme Court has called the "rarest of rare cases," and is imposed by hanging. No execution has been carried out since 2004 and many appeals for clemency are pending. This includes one from the killers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991, and a Kashmiri separatist who attacked India's parliament in 2001.

U.S. officials say a Pakistani-American charged with an attempted car bombing in New York City is cooperating with investigators as they try to determine a motive for the planned attack. Faisal Shahzad was arrested late Monday and charged with trying to blow up a sports utility vehicle in crowded Times Square on Saturday. Meanwhile, authorities in Pakistan say they have made arrests in connection with the failed car bombing.

The man charged with numerous counts of terrorism was born in this tiny northwestern village known as Mohib Banda. Faisal Shahzad's father is a retired air vice marshal in the Pakistani military. He comes from an upper-middle class family. Neighbors in this town of 5,000 are saddened by the news.

"I am weeping for my village; I am weeping for this unfortunate family," Nazirullah Khan, retired school teacher said. "What on earth is going on?"

Some analysts say discontent is bubbling up from the Pakistani middle class because of U.S. restrictions on visas and increased screening after recent bomb attempts. However, Faiz Ahmed, village elders says he knows Shahzad. "He was an absolutely normal person. He had no connection with any religious party or any political party," he recalled.

But police say Shahzad, now a naturalized American citizen, admitted to his role in Saturday night's attempted car bombing. And, that he took bomb making lessons in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Tehrik-e-Taliban, initially claimed responsibility for the attempted act of violence. The group, based along the border with Afghanistan, had been targeting the Pakistani government, not the U.S. But now, counterterrorism research fellow, Brian Fishman, worry the group's reach may go farther. "This is clearly a sign that the group has become closer to al-Qaida and is looking to attack abroad," he said.

Other experts do not believe the Taliban in Pakistan have the resources for such an act. They think Shahzad may have acted alone when they say he parked his car rigged with bomb materials in Times Square. The terrorism attempt comes at a bad time for U.S.-Pakistani relations. Analysts say the two countries were starting to make progress against the Taliban. The U.S. ambassador on Wednesday met with senior Pakistani officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari .

"They recognize as we do, that this is a shared responsibility and a shared threat," said P.J. Crowley of the US State Department.

The most recent threat nearly got away. The 30-year-old Pakistani American was on board this flight, bound for Dubai when pilots heard this from Air Traffic Control:

Federal agents stopped the flight and removed Shahzad, who managed to board the airplane despite being placed on a "no-fly" list hours before. Now, the U.S. government is changing the rules to require airlines to check the no-fly list within two hours after being notified of changes. Legislators on Capitol Hill are also looking at new laws to deny gun and explosive purchases to suspected terrorists.

"We don't want to rob people of a constitutional right but - I kind of don't like saying this, but I'm going to do it, and that is - to err on the side of protection is the chance sometimes we have to take," said Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg from New Jersey.

Shahzad's first appearance in an American courtroom was delayed. Law enforcement officials say they are keeping him busy with interrogations - and that he's giving them significant information.

A plume of ash measuring up to seven kilometers (more than four miles) high had been detected at the Eyjafjoell volcano, said a statement late Thursday from the Icelandic Met Office and Institute of Earth Science.

"The eruption has changed back to an explosive eruption, lava has stopped flowing and most of the magma gets scattered due to explosions in the crater," said the statement in English.

"The ash plume rises high above the crater (4-7 km) and considerable ash fall can be expected in wind direction. No signs of the eruption ending soon."

The move prompted authorities to consider Thursday re-routing transatlantic flights and Ireland to shut airports for a third time this week.

"Ash production did increase last night and the ash plume is going higher now than the last couple of days," Agust Gunnar Gylfason, who monitors the eruption's progress at Iceland's Civil Protection Department, told AFP.

European airspace and airports across the continent were open Thursday, but intergovernmental air traffic control agency Eurocontrol said the ash cloud could mean transatlantic flights might need to be re-routed.

"Significant re-routing of westbound transatlantic flights to avoid the higher contaminated area is currently being discussed between the air navigation service providers concerned and Eurocontrol," the Brussels-based body added.

The area where concentrations of ash could still pose a risk to aircraft engines was lying to the north and west of Ireland, it said.

While the airspace above Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland was open on Thursday after having been shut for the previous two days, Irish authorities announced later in the day the new ash had forced them to shut airports again.

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) warned a "massive ash cloud" 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) long and 700 miles wide was hovering over the Atlantic and drifting into the country's airspace.

"While the northerly winds are keeping the bulk of the cloud out in the Atlantic, the increased size of the cloud is encroaching on Irish airspace along the west coast of Ireland," said the regulator in a statement.

Six airports would be closed, starting at midnight (2300 GMT) Thursday and continuing until 1:00 pm (1200 GMT) Friday. Among those shutting down were Shannon and Donegal, said the IAA.

The fresh disruption came after Europe's skies were closed for up to a week last month by the eruption of Eyjafjoell. It was the biggest aerial shutdown in Europe since World War II, with more than 100,000 flights cancelled and eight million passengers affected.

Gylfason said ash plume "had reached 30,000 feet (9,000 metres) for some time last night, and again this morning, due to an increase in explosive activity, but otherwise it's been around 18,000 and 20,000 feet."

At the strongest period of the eruption, Eyjafjoell sent a plume around 30,000 feet into the air, but scientists have stressed that the height of the plume does not necessarily reflect a particular quantity of ash.

On Tuesday, the plume contained about only 10 percent of the ash it held at the beginning of the eruption.

British Airways said Thursday that its passenger numbers fell by almost one quarter last month as a result of the flight bans prompted by the volcanic ash cloud.

Its total number of passengers slumped 24.5 percent to 2.081 million people in April, compared with the same month of 2009, it said in a statement.

It was unclear whether the sudden sell-off, the Dow's biggest ever intra-day drop, was the result of fears over the Greek debt crisis, a mistaken trade or a technical error.

The crash began shortly before 2:25 local time, when in a white-knuckle 20 minutes America's top 30 firms saw their share prices dive 998.5 points, almost nine percent, wiping out billions in market value.

The drop eclipsed even the crashes seen when markets reopened after September 11, 2001 and in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse.

The Dow later recovered, closing nearly four percent down, but spooked traders were left wondering whether a glitch had caused the blue-chip index to erode three months of solid gains.

Rumors swirled that a Citigroup trader had mistakenly sold 16 billion rather than 16 million stocks in Procter and Gamble, forcing the Dow down.

Shares in the consumer goods giant lost more than seven dollars, falling in a similar pattern to the Dow, trading at a low of 55 dollars a share on the New York Stock Exchange.

"At this point, we have no evidence that Citi was involved in any erroneous transaction," said company spokesman Stephen Cohen.

A spokesperson for the New York Stock Exchange said there had been no technical problems on the exchange.

"We did not have any glitches or technical issues," said Eric Ryan.

But after three days in which stocks have suffered triple-digit intra-day losses because of concern about Greece's debt crisis, it was clear that the sell-off was real for some investors.

At the close, the Dow had recovered to 10,520.32, down 347.80 (3.20 percent), while the Nasdaq was down 82.65 points (3.44 percent) at 2,319.64. The Standard & Poors 500 Index was down 37.72 points (3.24 percent) to 1,128.15.

Images of rioting as the Greek parliament passed unpopular austerity measures did little to ease market panic.

The parliament approved billions of euros of spending cuts pledged in exchange for a 110 billion euro (140 billion dollar) EU-IMF bailout just one day after three bank workers died in a firebomb attack during a huge protest.

On Thursday, police charged to scatter hundreds of youths at the tail-end of a new protest outside parliament that drew more than 10,000 people.

In Lisbon, European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet battled to reassure financial markets that Greece's debt crisis would not end in default, but could not prevent the euro from falling to a 14-month low against the dollar.

Pleas for patience from the White House also had little impact.

The White House said that reforms in Greece were "important" but would take time and that the US Treasury was monitoring the situation.

"The president has heard regularly from his economic team," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, adding that President Barack Obama's top economic officials were closely communicating with their European counterparts.