After announcing in a Web forum in December that he would entertain questions on virtually any topic, Zawahiri received 1,888 written queries from journalists and the public. He patiently answered about one-fifth of them, even hostile postings that condemned Al Qaeda for harming innocents and perverting Islam. (Source: Washington Post)

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Afghan officials say an airstrike has killed more than a dozen militants in the east of the country. Police and militants fought a gunbattle in Sayid Karam district of Paktia province at about midnight Monday. When the gunmen withdrew toward nearby mountains, a warplane attacked them. Provincial police chief Ismatullah Alizai said 15 militants were killed. He said all the bodies as well as four wounded fighters were at a local hospital. (Source: Washington Post)

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Iraq

The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the "surge" of combat troops President Bush launched in January 2007 as an 18-month effort to curtail violence and build Iraqi democracy, government investigators said yesterday. While agreeing with the administration that violence has decreased sharply, a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the "New Way Forward" strategy remain unmet. The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets. (Source: Washington Post)

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Two U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded Monday when a council member opened fire on them after a meeting in a small town south of Baghdad. An Iraqi interpreter also was wounded in the shooting in Salman Pak Nahia, which is about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Two Salman Pak residents identified the assailant, who was killed. Also Monday, the U.S. military announced that a Canadian man working as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Iraq was sentenced to five months of confinement after pleading guilty in the stabbing of a colleague in February. The contractor, Alaa "Alex" Mohammad Ali, was the first civilian prosecuted since a 2006 amendment to the Uniform Code of Military Justice allowed the military to court-martial civilian contractors. On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed 15 people in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala. In a town north of the provincial capital, 10 members of an Awakening Council, or armed neighborhood watch group, were killed when their office was attacked with mortars Sunday night. (Source: Washington Post)

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United States

President Bush has nominated Lieutenant General Ann E. Dunwoody to take over the Army's Materiel Command as a four-star general, and if confirmed by the Senate she would be the first woman in U.S. history to receive such a high military rank. In announcing the nomination yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates praised Dunwoody's "extraordinary leadership and devotion to duty" and called the choice "an historic occasion." There are 57 active-duty female general officers in the U.S. armed forces, five of whom are three-star generals. About 5 percent of the Army's general officers are women. (Source: Washington Post)

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Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin has blocked the Pentagon´s nominee to head the Defense Information Systems Agency, because her husband is a senior executive at the nation´s No. 3 defense contractor and the perceived conflicts of interest made the nomination "untenable." A senior congressional aide told United Press International that during a routine investigation into the background of the nominee, Rear Admiral Elizabeth Hight, committee staff noted that her husband, retired Air Force Brig. General Gary Salisbury, is vice president of business development and sales for Northrop Grumman's mission systems sector. (Source: Washington Times)

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Africa

Heavily armed police officers raided the headquarters of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change party on Monday, dragging away about 60 people, including children, on a day when world leaders condemned violence by the Zimbabwean government in increasingly strong terms. As Tsvangirai took refuge in the Dutch Embassy here, the U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed in New York that the violence and restrictions on Tsvangirai's party "have made it impossible for a free and fair election to take place" on Friday. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on the government of President Robert Mugabe to postpone the scheduled runoff election, saying the vote would lack "all legitimacy." But Zimbabwe's U.N. ambassador, Boniface Chidyausiku, dismissed the appeal, saying, "As far as the runoff is concerned, the election goes ahead." (Source: Washington Post)

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Asia

A high court on Monday barred the leader of the junior partner in the government, Nawaz Sharif, from running for Parliament in a by-election later this week, a decision that is bound to intensify the hostilities within the fractious ruling coalition. Supporters of Nawaz Sharif rallied Monday against a court ruling to prevent him from running for Parliament this week. Mr. Sharif, who was twice prime minister and is now the most popular politician in the nation, according to some opinion polls, has differed with the leader of the coalition, Asif Ali Zardari, over the reinstatement of judges fired last November during emergency rule. The ruling against Mr. Sharif by the High Court in Lahore was made by three judges appointed by President Pervez Musharraf after he declared the emergency rule. (Source: New York Times)

Middle East

Islamic Jihad in the West Bank is planning to carry out an attack on Israel to ruin the cease-fire agreement in Gaza, PA security officials said on Monday. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Palestinian gunmen in Gaza fired a mortar at Israel on Tuesday, in a breach of last Thursday's cease-fire agreement. (Source: Ynet News)

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