A Taliban suicide bomber killed four Afghans on Sunday in the heart of a town taken from rebels five months ago and a foreign soldier in a U.S.-led force died in another blast. The soldier, whose nationality was not released, was killed with an Afghan "non-combatant" in the blast in the southern province of Zabul, the coalition said in a statement that gave no further details. Another soldier was seriously injured in the attack in which a bomb blew up a military vehicle. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, but the extremist Taliban militia, in government until 2001, has carried out a series of similar attacks. The insurgent group confirmed it was behind a suicide bombing that tore through a bazaar in the town of Musa Qala, a Taliban base and drugs centre in the province of Helmand for 10 months until troops entered in December. The attacker ran at a police vehicle patrolling the town and exploded on impact. Four civilians were killed and three wounded, two of them seriously. Five policemen were hurt. A day earlier a NATO helicopter carrying the Helmand governor, Gulab Mangal, came under fire from Taliban as it was about to land in Musa Qala. In another operation, Afghan soldiers killed 15 Taliban in "face-to-face fighting" in the western province of Badghis on Saturday. The violence left 8,000 people dead last year, most of them rebels, and alarmed Afghans as well as some of the nearly 40 nations with troops here in what they say is a battle to stem more terror attacks worldwide. (Source: AFP)

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A British soldier has died in an explosion in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) added that the man's family had been informed but had asked that no more details be released. It said the soldier was patrolling on foot in Musa Qala, Helmand, when he was caught in an explosion and "tragically" died. No one else was injured. His death brings the number of UK troops killed in operations in the country since 2001, to 96. (Source: BBC)

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The Afghan government will decide when foreign troops will leave the country, the foreign minister said on Tuesday, but added they would be needed until Afghan security forces could stand on their own feet. Currently some 60,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military are stationed in Afghanistan where the Al Qaeda-backed Taliban movement has made a comeback since 2006. The number of Western-trained and funded Afghan security forces fighting against the militants stands at nearly 150,000. (Source: Reuters)

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The slayings of six development aid workers and three attacks against the German military in four weeks underscore the "alarming developments" in Northern Afghanistan, warns the head of the German Army, the Bundeswehr. The area of German deployment once believed to be safe is turning into a ‘powderkeg.’(Source: Der Spiegel)

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A roadside bomb exploded Tuesday near a military truck in northwestern Pakistan, wounding at least five troops and one civilian. Local police chief Ibrahim Khan said the bomb was apparently attached to a bicycle and went off in the town of Kohat, about 40 miles south of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but it comes two days after a suicide bombing outside a military base in the northwestern town of Mardan that killed 11 people, including four soldiers. A Taliban militant group claimed responsibility for that attack. (Source: AP)

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A Yemeni-American on the FBI's most-wanted list of terror suspects was jailed in Yemen after an appeals court upheld his 10-year prison sentence, officials said Monday. Washington had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Jaber Elbaneh's arrest, but Yemeni law forbade his extradition even after the police arrested him in 2004. Elbaneh, who has been accused of belonging to Al Qaeda, has been convicted of plots to attack oil installations in Yemen and of involvement in a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast that killed one person.

(Source: IHT)

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Moroccan security services have arrested 11 people on charges of plotting attacks in Morocco and Belgium and having links to Iraq's insurgency, the Moroccan state news agency said Monday. The suspects, including a Moroccan living in Belgium, were arrested in the cities of Nador and Fez, the MAP agency said, citing unidentified police officials. The report did not say when the arrests took place. Those arrested are accused of having links to cells sending fighters to Iraq's insurgency and to camps of an Algeria-based militant group, Al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa. The report said authorities believed the suspects were planning attacks in Morocco and Belgium, without elaborating. (Source: AP)

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Iraq

President Bush has apologized to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for an American sniper's use of a copy of the Quran for target practice, Maliki's office said Tuesday. A statement issued by al-Maliki's office said Bush offered the apology in a telephone call to the Iraqi leader late Monday. Bush told al-Maliki that the sniper would face trial, it added. The U.S. military said Sunday it had disciplined the sniper and removed him from Iraq after he was found to have used Islam's holy book for target practice on May 9. The copy of the Quran was found two days later by Iraqis on a firing range in Radwaniyah, west of Baghdad, with 14 bullet holes in it and graffiti written on its pages. On Saturday, the top American commander in Baghdad, Major General Jeffery Hammond, and other officers held a formal ceremony apologizing to tribal chiefs in Radwaniyah.

(Source: AP)

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Thousands of Iraqi troops moved unchallenged into Baghdad's Sadr City Tuesday to seize the Shiite militia stronghold, in the largest attempt yet by the government to impose control. The large Iraqi force backed by tanks entered the sprawling district before dawn, with troops taking up positions on street corners and deploying on rooftops as Iraqi Humvees patrolled the streets. The move is the strongest attempt yet by the government to impose control over the district, which has long been the unquestioned bastion of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to al-Sadr. Iraqi and U.S. troops have in the past largely stayed on the neighborhood's edges. Three brigades with about 10,000 troops were involved in the deployment. Iraqi soldiers also found a large weapons cache on the grounds of the Shaaroofi mosque Monday in the Shaab district, a Shiite militia stronghold that is adjacent to Sadr City, according to a U.S. military statement. The find included eight armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, seven rocket-propelled grenades as well as other munitions and documents detailing kidnappings and murders. (Source: AP)

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United States

Foreign oil imports fell in the United States in the first quarter of 2008, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. Foreign imports fell to 57.9 percent of the country's consumption, down from 58.2 percent a year ago. The trend is pushed by high oil prices, biofuel production mandates and improved fuel efficiency in cars, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. Increased demand in emerging markets has kept oil prices high in spite of a decline in the United States. (Source: UPI)

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The Louisiana National Guard unit that was called home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was ordered yesterday to prepare to return to Iraq for its second tour. The members of the 256th Brigade Combat Team were not alone. Pentagon officials notified about 40,000 active-duty and National Guard soldiers yesterday that they will be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the upcoming months and years. About 25,000 active-duty troops and 14,000 National Guard members will be called to replace those returning from the region. The majority will be going to Iraq. (Source: Washington Times)

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The Pentagon on Monday announced upcoming deployments of more than 42,000 troops, including 25,000 active duty Army soldiers who would be sent to Iraq beginning in the fall to replace troops scheduled to come home by year's end. The deployments would maintain a level of 15 brigades in Iraq, or roughly 140,000 troops, the number military leaders expect will remain on the warfront at the end of July, once the currently planned withdrawals are finished. Under the new Pentagon policy effective in August, those active duty Army units will serve for 12 months, rather than the 15-month tours that units in Iraq now are serving. The bulk of the soldiers deploying later this year returned from Iraq late last year, and will have gotten about a year at home to rest and retrain. As part of the announcement, The Pentagon alerted four National Guard Army brigades, or about 14,000 troops, to begin preparing for deployments to Iraq beginning next spring, and one National Guard Army brigade, with about 3,100 soldiers, to prepare to deploy to Afghanistan in the spring of 2010. (Source: AP)

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Africa

Zimbabwe's ruling party on Tuesday dismissed as fantasy opposition claims that President Robert Mugabe's military intelligence was plotting to assassinate its leadership ahead of a run-off election. As Mugabe's government was urged to accept African Union monitors to ensure the vote scheduled for next month passes off peacefully, ministers accused the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his top lieutenant of trying to stir up trouble and assured them they had no reason to fear for their safety. The Pentagon on Monday announced upcoming deployments of more than 42,000 troops, including 25,000 active duty Army soldiers who would be sent to Iraq beginning in the fall to replace troops scheduled to come home by year's end. (Source: AFP)

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Fighting raged between rival Sudanese forces on Tuesday in Abyei, the flashpoint oil-rich area between north and south whose status remains contested three years after the end of civil war. Aid workers said fighting went on for at least five hours between government troops and southern ex-rebels, who fought Africa's longest civil war until reaching a fragile power-sharing peace agreement with Khartoum in 2005. (Source: AFP)

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President Thabo Mbeki made an impassioned appeal for South Africans to respect the dignity of foreigners as calls grew on Tuesday for troops to be sent in to stamp out xenophobic violence. The flare-up in the Johannesburg region, now believed to have claimed the lives of 23 people and displaced thousands, has badly stretched police resources in one of the world's most crime-ridden cities. While the overall situation appeared Tuesday to have calmed down slightly, tension was palpable in many townships where mobs armed with axes and machetes could still be seen roaming the streets. (Source: AFP)

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Americas

A day after surrendering to the army, a one-eyed, battle-hardened female rebel commander urged other guerrillas Monday to follow her example and abandon their decades-long struggle. Nelly Avila Moreno, better known as "Karina," denied her bloody reputation during a news conference. She said she surrendered because she was encircled, had a bounty on her head and was spooked by the recent murder of a fellow rebel leader by one of his bodyguards. Avila, 40, nevertheless expressed admiration for Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chavez, who has been implicated in seeking to arm and finance the rebels in documents the Colombian government says it found on the computer of a different slain guerrilla. (Source: AP)

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Venezuela wants the U.S. ambassador to explain a violation of its airspace by a U.S. Navy plane, the country's foreign minister said Monday. The U.S. Navy plane was detected in Venezuelan airspace Saturday night near the Caribbean island of La Orchila, and questioned by the Caracas airport control tower. The Navy S-3 Viking, used for counter-narcotics missions, may have accidentally crossed into Venezuela's airspace while experiencing "intermittent navigational problems" on a training mission in international airspace, a U.S. defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the issue's sensitivity. (Source: AP)

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Asia

Japan should boost defense spending instead of decreasing it as Tokyo's Asian neighbors expand their military budgets, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan said Tuesday. Over the last decade China has increased military expenditures by an average of 14.2 percent annually, and South Korea's defense budget has grown 73 percent, said J. Thomas Schieffer, U.S. ambassador in Japan since 2005. In contrast, Japan's ratio of defense spending to gross domestic product has been declining. Japan's Ministry of Defense expects a budget of $46 billion this fiscal year through March 2009, down 0.8 percent from the previous year, a trend Schieffer called "troubling." (Source: AP)

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China said it was struggling to find shelter for many of the 5 million people whose homes were destroyed in last week's earthquake, while the confirmed death toll rose Tuesday to more than 40,000. Meanwhile, rescuers pulled a 31-year-old man to safety, the second known case of someone being found alive a week after the May 12 earthquake. Ma Yuanjiang was saved from the debris of the Yingxiu Bay Hydropower Plant after a 30-hour rescue effort. Ma was able to speak and began to eat small amounts of food, colleague Wu Geng told the agency. A miner was rescued after being trapped for 170 hours Monday. The State Council, China's Cabinet, raised the overall confirmed death toll to 40,075, most of those in Sichuan province. Officials have said the final number killed by the quake is expected to surpass 50,000.

(Source: AP)

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Taiwanese prosecutors launched a corruption probe against outgoing President Chen Shui-bian on Tuesday, hours after he completed eight combative years in office. The Supreme Prosecutors Office, which reports directly to the Supreme Court, said in a statement that Chen was being investigated for his role in the handling of a special presidential fund used to pursue Taiwan's foreign diplomacy. There was no immediate comment from Chen. The investigation relates the alleged embezzlement of $484,000. Chen's wife was indicted in December 2006 over the fund's handling. At the time, prosecutors said Chen could be indicted once he left office, ending his presidential immunity. (Source: AP)

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Meanwhile, Taiwan's new President took office Tuesday and set the tone for his administration's policy on rival China: better economic and political ties but no plans for unification with the mainland. The inauguration of Ma Ying-jeou, 57, represents a clear break from the eight-year presidency of Chen Shui-bian, whose confrontational pro-independence policies often led to friction with Beijing, and with the United States, Taiwan's most important foreign partner. (Source: AP)

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The U.N. Secretary-General will meet the head of Myanmar's ruling junta during a visit this week to discuss assistance for cyclone victims. U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes says Ban Ki-moon is supposed to visit Myanmar on Thursday for talks and an inspection of the devastated area. On Sunday, he is supposed to attend a meeting of aid donors in Yangon. (Source: AP)

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Pakistan said it would release nearly 100 Indian prisoners in a goodwill gesture as it resumed peace talks with India on Tuesday for the first time since Islamabad's new civilian government took over from military rule. India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the new "democratic environment" in Pakistan would help the two nations seek "peace, stability and economic development." Both neighbor countries want to sustain the slow-moving dialogue, started four years ago under former military strongman, President Pervez Musharraf. But the instability of the new Pakistan government could further hinder progress. Top civil servants from the two foreign ministries met Tuesday in Islamabad to review the four rounds of talks held since the peace process began in early 2004. (Source: AP)

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Middle East

France has had contacts with the leaders of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas "for several months," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday. In an interview with Europe 1 radio, Kouchner said Hamas still does not recognize the State of Israel but is "more flexible than before" on the subject. Historically, Hamas has called for Israel's elimination. In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We don't believe it is helpful to the process of bringing peace to the region." The U.S. and EU consider Hamas a terrorist organization. (Source: Washington Post)

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Israel is reportedly skeptical that a cease-fire with Hamas will be reached and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is preparing for a large-scale military operation in Gaza, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said in recent closed-door meetings, adding that he is letting the process play out in order to show respect for the Egyptian leadership. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Israel is demanding that Egypt engage in thorough screening efforts deep within Egyptian territory in order to stop all those who travel to Iran, and particularly those who return from it, as well as the rocket launchers, explosives, and anti-aircraft rockets sent to Hamas by Iran. In the wake of the Philadelphi Route breach in January, Egypt managed to work effectively in Sinai to prevent the infiltration of armed Hamas men planning to carry out attacks. Now, Israel is demanding that Egypt prevent unarmed Hamas men who are traveling to Iran for training from passing through Egypt. Israeli security officials say that what matters is not what Hamas does or demands, but rather what Egypt does. President Mubarak will determine whether a lull in Gaza goes into effect or not, through the actions of his people on the ground. For Israel, the key lies with vigorous Egyptian activity that would cut Gaza off from the "bosses" in Tehran. (Source: Ynet News)

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Israel is mistaken if it thinks that a truce with Hamas would mean that "resistance operations" would end, Osama Hamdan, Hamas' representative in Lebanon, said Monday. "As far as Hamas is concerned, all options remain open." (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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A Palestinian carrying four pipe bombs was killed Monday at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus in the West Bank. Corporal Michal Ya'akov of the military police spotted four pipe bombs strapped to his body. "I identified the explosive devices and yelled 'bomb in the checkpoint' and cocked my rifle. Everyone aimed at the Palestinian's head and neck so as not to set off the explosives," she said. (Source: Ynet News)

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Palestinian terrorists on Tuesday launched two Kassam rockets from Gaza at the Sderot area. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Iran's disputed nuclear program has sent a wave of interest in atomic energy across the Middle East, a think tank said Tuesday, warning that it risked setting the scene for a regional nuclear arms race. At least 13 Middle Eastern countries either announced new plans to explore atomic energy or revived pre-existing nuclear programs between February 2006 and January 2007, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, said in a report. While the flurry of interest in nuclear power is still tentative, the report said countries such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria or Egypt could soon feel the need to match Iran's nuclear ambitions. The report cautioned that most of the programs were still immature, it noted that sustainable new reactor projects in the Middle East were at least 10 or 15 years away, and said motivations were mixed.

(Source: AP)

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US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday.

The official claimed that a senior member of the president's entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for. However, the official continued, "the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic, for the time being. The report stated that according to assessments in Israel, recent turmoil in Lebanon, where Hizbullah de facto established control of the country, was advancing an American attack. Bush, the officials said, opined that Hizbullah's show of strength was evidence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's growing influence. They said that according to Bush, "the disease must be treated, not its symptoms." (Source: AP)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University