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Hospital-bombing toll may soar, Doctors Without Borders warns
A Doctors Without Borders official said there might be more bodies in the heavily damaged main building of the Kunduz hospital, but the group had not been able to return to it because of security...
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Afghan court cancels death sentences in mob killing of woman
Afghanistan’s Supreme Court has vacated the death sentences against the four men who killed a young woman falsely accused of burning a Quran. Nine other defendants had their sentences reduced.
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Airstrike in Yemen hits school; 19 killed, mostly children
After Saturday’s bloodshed at a school and a principal’s home, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition that staged the attacks said Houthi militants use civilian facilities. Witnesses, however,...
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EU talks on Turkey membership are near collapse
Many policymakers and analysts criticized the European Parliament’s expected move, saying it would push Turkey to harden its position on human rights and the death penalty.
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Syria OKs Russian air, sea bases, as Turkey softens opposition to Assad
News of the agreement came as President Bashar Assad received what appeared to be another positive development: A Turkish official suggested Turkey would accept a peace deal in Syria’s six-year war...
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Kabul fortification signals long U.S. stay in Afghanistan
After 16 years of U.S. presence in Kabul, the new project is an acknowledgment that even the city’s central districts have become too difficult to defend from Taliban bombings.
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After 6,000 years of human habitation, one family and lots of mice
The Irbil citadel predates Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds and for that matter Arabs, Genghis Khan, the Persians, Greeks and Romans, all of whom passed this way. History is alive among its walls.
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Afghan girl, 11, has been in prison since birth with her mother, a convicted...
Afghanistan’s approximately 30 women’s prisons have several hundred children accompanying their mothers. Here’s the story of one of them.
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Santa reigns in remote Finnish outpost
At this time of year around 20 airliners a day, land here in the capital of Finnish Lapland, disgorging families from scores of countries, and bringing wide-eyed children to a reliably snowy place that...
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Afghan pedophiles get free pass from U.S. military, report says
The report did little to answer questions about how prevalent child sexual abuse was in the Afghan military and police, and how commonly the U.S. military looked the other way at the widespread...
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With the Mafia silenced, a grand opera house sings again
Shut down and forgotten for decades when the Mafia held Palermo in its grip, the resurgence of the great house is a symbol of the city’s rebirth.
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These African elephants have no tusks — no poachers either
In most African elephant populations, as few as 2 percent of the cows lack tusks. But among Addo’s 300-odd females, the rate is 90 percent to 95 percent, a trait that has evolved rapidly over the last...
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‘Play it again, Issam’: In Casablanca, a cafe is still a cafe
A former American diplomat from Portland, Oregon, cashed in her 401(k) to create Rick’s Café Américain, an ode to the classic film, in Casablanca, Morocco.
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Are ISIS fighters prisoners or ‘honored guests’ of the Afghan government?
About 250 ISIS fighters surrendered to the Afghan government. Their treatment is raising eyebrows.
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The Afghan army’s last stand at Chinese Camp
The battle is an object lesson in the difficult conditions under which many Afghan troops fight and the inability of their military to support and resupply them — especially when forces are stretched...
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From Orwell to ‘The Little Mermaid,’ Kuwait Steps Up Book Banning
KUWAIT — No book, it seems, is too substantive or too insignificant to be banned in Kuwait. Recent targets of the government’s literary censors include an encyclopedia with a picture of Michelangelo’s...
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‘Legacy of terror’: Questions, answers on the mass graves found in Iraq
BAGHDAD — More than 200 mass graves holding as many as 12,000 bodies have been found in areas of Iraq once controlled by the Islamic State, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The findings were...
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Kurdish fighters discuss releasing ISIS prisoners
Maintaining the 3,200 prisoners has been a burden on the group, and the United States has helped pay for the effort. There is no indication that American aid would necessarily end, but without U.S....
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Afghan forces withstand 3 terror attacks at once
While demonstrating the capabilities of Taliban terrorists, three almost simultaneous attacks Friday in Kabul were handled by Afghan security forces, which officials took as a sign that training by the...
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Afghan women fear peace with Taliban may mean war on them
Horror stories at the hands of Taliban enforcers are a staple for any educated Afghan woman older than 25 or so. Now those women have a new horror story: the possibility that U.S. troops will leave...
View ArticleKarzai rebuffs Afghan council, won’t sign U.S. security deal
KABUL, Afghanistan — An angry President Hamid Karzai on Sunday rejected the final recommendation of a four-day Afghan grand assembly that he should promptly sign a security agreement with the United...
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Furious over drone death, Karzai mum after Taliban attack
KABUL, Afghanistan — As so often happens in the fog of war, the attack in a village in Kandahar on Friday missed the enemy patrol that was its intended target, instead killing an 8-year-old boy and...
View ArticleAfghan museum reassembles, recaptures its broken collection
KABUL, Afghanistan — Every piece of antiquity that is restored to the halls of the bombed, pillaged and now-rebuilt National Museum of Afghanistan sends a message of defiance and resilience. These are...
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Many Afghans still lack access to health care
KABUL, Afghanistan — The patients in the four hospitals run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan are the lucky ones, by all accounts, having arrived at well-stocked facilities that maintain...
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Afghanistan frees detainees U.S. considers dangerous
BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Thursday morning, the gates of the Parwan Detention Center near Bagram Air Field swung open and 65 men with long beards and new clothes walked out to freedom. The moment showed...
View ArticleCountries divided on future of ancient Afghan Buddhas
BAMIAN, Afghanistan — They were the picture-postcard view of a rural and mostly untouched Afghanistan: ancient, towering Buddhas that became a symbol of the Taliban’s religious fanaticism and...
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Taliban mistake armed compound for day-care center
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban assailants apparently thought they were attacking an unprotected Christian-run day-care center. But they mistakenly burst into the compound next door, where a U.S....
View ArticleDuring bloody march in Iraq, militants display humor, savvy
BAGHDAD — When al-Qaida-style insurgents overran the northern city of Mosul, part of the war booty they seized were what they claimed were five U.S.-made helicopters. Noting the copters were nearly...
View ArticleIraq fighting grows; Sunni allies clash
BAGHDAD — The violent struggle over Iraq on Saturday consumed cities and towns widely spread over the north and west of the country, with Sunni militants and the Iraqi army claiming gains. An Iraqi...
View ArticleRussian fighter jets, experts to help Iraqi government
BAGHDAD — Iraqi government officials said Sunday that Russian experts had arrived to help the army get 12 new Russian warplanes into the fight against Sunni extremists, while the extremists declared...
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Afghanistan rivals agree to power-sharing deal
KABUL, Afghanistan — The two candidates for president of Afghanistan have agreed on a power-sharing deal that will give the losing candidate substantial influence in the next government, initialing the...
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Karzai lashes out: ‘America did not want peace for Afghanistan’
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s departing president, Hamid Karzai, used his final speech to his Cabinet and senior staff members Tuesday to make a bitter swipe at the United States and some of its...
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Afghan mullah who raped girl in mosque sentenced to 20 years
KABUL, Afghanistan — A mullah who raped a 10-year-old girl in his mosque was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a dramatic trial Saturday during which his accuser, weeping and shaking, summoned the...
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Young Afghan woman defies pledged marriage
KABUL, Afghanistan — Nine years before an Afghan girl named Soheila was born, her half-brother Aminullah eloped with a woman who had been betrothed to his cousin, an event that led to years of violent...
View ArticleOpium growing soars in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan opium cultivation again rose to historic levels in 2014, U.N. officials reported Wednesday. And in a sign of how deeply entwined drug trafficking and the Afghan political...
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