Alissa J Rubin New York Times

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  A Swedish Girl, ISIS And A Cautionary Tale Of Global Terrorism

  The story of Marilyn Nevalainen stands out as a rare case in which a young European went unwittingly into the heart of jihadist territory and was freed.

• France and a first lady, and a second, and...

  As a candidate for the French presidency in 2012, Francois Hollande promised to be more boring spouse than flamboyant seducer.

• In Afghanistan, girls pay for elders' misdeeds

  Shakila, eight at the time, was drifting off to sleep when a group of men carrying AK-47s barged in through the door. She recalls that they complained, as they dragged her off into the darkness, about how their family had been dishonored and about how they had not been paid.

• Former Taliban officials say US talks started

  Several Taliban negotiators have begun meeting with American officials in Qatar, where they are discussing preliminary trust-building measures, including a possible prisoner transfer, several former Taliban officials said on Saturday.

• Jailed Afghan woman freed but urged to marry rapist

  When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system.

• Taliban attack US Embassy in Kabul; 6 killed

  In the most direct assault since the American Embassy opened here nine years ago, heavily armed insurgents wearing suicide vests put the embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters in their cross hairs, showing the Taliban's ability to enter even the most heavily fortified districts in the country.

• Kabul under attack: Taliban fires rockets at US Embassy

  Kabul under attack: Insurgents launched a complex assault against the United States Embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters on Tuesday, pelting the heavily guarded compounds with rockets in an assault that raised new questions about the security of Afghanistan's capital and the Westerners working there.

• After Osama, What next for Afghanistan?

  From the Taliban's hidden mud compounds to NATO's headquarters in Brussels and the Pentagon, combatants in a decade-long war are asking versions of the same question: How does Osama bin Laden's death change the struggle over who will control Afghanistan? The Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, is said to be in Pakistan. For the Taliba...

• Gathering firewood, 9 Afghan boys killed by NATO helicopters

  Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan  mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents, according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO, which apologized for the mistake.The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war's worst...

• US pulling back in Afghan valley it called vital to war

  After years of fighting for control of a prominent valley in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the United States military has begun to pull back most of its forces from ground it once insisted was central to the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.The withdrawal from the Pech Valley, a remote region in Kunar Province, formally bega...