Rod Nordland New York Times

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  Islamic State Militants Say They Killed 2nd Japanese Hostage

  The Islamic State claimed to have beheaded a Japanese journalist in a video released Saturday night, culminating a two-week drama that appears to have cost the lives of two Japanese men.

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  Support for al-Maliki Slips Within His Own Party as Armed US Drones Start Flights

  As the first armed U.S. drones began flying over Iraq on Thursday, Shiite political leaders were locked in meetings to try to decide who should be the country's next prime minister.

• In grip of cold, Afghan family buries eighth child

  The war refugee Sayid Mohammad lost his last son on Wednesday, 3-month-old Khan, who became the 24th child to die of exposure in camps here in the past month. "After we had dinner he was crying all night of the cold," Mr. Mohammad said. The family had no wood and was husbanding a small portion of paper and plastic that his daughter had scavenged th...

• NATO plays down report of collaboration between Taliban and Pakistan

  A spokesman for the NATO-led coalition on Wednesday confirmed the existence of a report that summarizes the views of Taliban detainees who said that they are winning the war thanks to cooperation from some Afghan government officials and soldiers with active support from Pakistan's intelligence service.

• Rebels flee key Libyan town Ajdabiya

  Rebel fighters fled Ajdabiya on Sunday after a rocket and artillery attack by government forces that were reportedly on the western outskirts. Scores of rebel pickup trucks and other vehicles could be seen leaving the eastern approaches of Ajdabiya, headed toward the rebel capital of Benghazi, about 85 miles north. Explosions could be heard in the ...

• Kandahar: Nine killed, 81 injured in violent protests against Quran burning

  Violent protests over the burning of a Quran in Florida flared for a second straight day, with young men rampaging through the streets of this southern capital, flying Taliban flags and wielding sticks. Nine people were killed and 81 injured in the disturbances, all from bullet wounds, according to Abdul Qayoum Pakhla, head of the provincial health...

• 2 UN staff killed by Afghan mob were beheaded

  Protesters angered by the burning of a Koran by a fringe American pastor in Florida mobbed offices of the United Nations in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing ten foreign staff members and beheading two of the victims, according to an Afghan police spokesman. Five Afghans were also killed.The attack began when hundreds of demonstrators, some o...

• Taliban seize district in eastern Afghanistan

  The Taliban seized control of a district in eastern Nuristan Province on Tuesday, chasing the governor and police from the district capital, according to Afghan officials and a spokesman for the Taliban. "The white flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is flying over the Want District centre, while some policemen of the puppet administration f...

• Children safer in Kabul than New York: NATO official

  NATO's senior civilian representative here provoked criticism from children's advocates on Monday after he said Kabul is safer for children than Western cities."In Kabul and the other big cities, there are very few of these bombs. The children are probably safer here than they would be in London, New York or Glasgow or many other cities," Mark Sedw...

• Caught on tape, a snippet of Afghan voting fraud

  On the audiotape, two men are heard speaking in Dari, with the distinct accent of the western city of Herat, as they negotiate terms for rigging more than a dozen races in Afghan's parliamentary elections.One of the men, according to the country's Independent Election Commission, is Abdul Rashid Irshad, a low-level functionary in the commission's K...

• On TV, an Afghan unit tackles the Taliban

  They break up child suicide-bomber rings, take down drug lords and government ministers (even when they are the same thing) and kick in doors to rescue kidnapped diplomats -- all with little or no help from the Americans and NATO.Two men and two women, they are part of an elite Afghan police unit known as Eagle Four, whose exploits have made them s...

• NATO destroys booby-trapped Afghan homes

  In the newly won districts around this southern city, American forces are encountering empty homes and farm buildings left so heavily booby-trapped by Taliban insurgents that the Americans have been systematically destroying hundreds of them, according to local Afghan authorities.The campaign, a major departure from NATO practice in past military o...

• Dissident Iranian journalist is jailed in a continued crackdown

  A day after Iran's president defended his country's record in permitting criticism, opposition Web sites reported on Wednesday that the second dissident Iranian journalist in less than a week had been incarcerated on charges including "propaganda against the state." The Web sites said the journalist, Emadeddin Baghi, had been ordered jailed for six...

• NATO drive on Kandahar begins, with mixed results

  The white flags of the Taliban no longer fly from neighbourhoods in Kandahar City, as they did in some areas only two weeks ago, replaced instead by the red, black and green Afghan colors.But if the Taliban have been driven further underground, there has been no significant let-up in their campaign of terror and assassination against anyone connect...

• Showcase Afghan army mission turns into debacle

  An ambitious military operation that Afghan officials had expected to be a sign of their growing military capacity instead turned into an embarrassment, with Taliban fighters battering an Afghan battalion in a remote eastern area until NATO sent in French and American rescue teams. The fighting has continued so intensely for the past week that...