Latest news update of the world

The leaders of the congressional committees said Sunday they believed that the Taliban had grown stronger since President Barack Obama sent 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2010. The pessimistic report by Sen. Dianne Feinstein , D-Calif., and Rep. Mike Rogers , R-Mich., challenges Obama's own assessment last week in his visit to Kabul that the "tide had turned" and that "we broke the Taliban's momentum." Feinstein and Rogers told CNN's "State of the Union" they aren't so sure. The two recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the region where they met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai . " President Karzai believes that the Taliban will not come back. I'm not so sure," Feinstein said. "The Taliban has a shadow system of governors in many provinces." When asked if the Taliban's capabilities have been degraded since Obama deployed the additional troops two years ago, Feinstein said: ...

Russia's foreign minister sharply criticized NATO's plan to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2014, saying Thursday that coalition troops should remain in the country until Afghan government forces are capable of ensuring security. "As long as Afghanistan is not able to ensure by itself the security in the country, the artificial timelines of withdrawal are not correct and they should not be set," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. NATO plans to hand over lead responsibility for the war against the Taliban to the Afghan army and police by the middle of next year, and to withdraw its troops by the end of 2014. It has already started drawing down its forces, which reached a peak of about 140,000 last year. NATO leaders say that Afghan forces are improving rapidly and will be able to counter Taliban guerrillas after 2014. But critics have pointed to widespread drug use and the high desertion rate among government forces as signs that it remains unprepa...

US soldiers took pictures of themselves posing with the mangled remains of suspected Afghan suicide bombers on more than one occasion in 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday. The LA Times said the US Army had launched an investigation into the incident after the newspaper showed them some of the photos, which it had obtained from a soldier in the division. The first incident took place in February 2010, when paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division were sent to an Afghan police station in Zabol province to inspect the remains of an alleged suicide bomber. The soldiers had intended to try to get fingerprints and possibly scan the irises of the corpse, but instead they posed for pictures next to the Afghan police, holding up or squatting beside the remains, the newspaper said. A few months later, the same platoon went to inspect the remains of three insurgents whom Afghan police said had blown themselves up by accident. Two soldiers posed holding up one of ...

Attackers in Afghanistan took over a central Kabul hotel close to the presidential palace, United Nations office and many foreign embassies, a local police official said Sunday, amid what seemed to a wave of coordinated attacks around the country. Four suicide bombers tried to attack the Jalalabad airfield where United States troops are based, the airfield commander said. One of the attackers blew himself up, while police intercepted the other three, commander Jahan Ngir said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks in a text message to CNN and on Twitter. "Several suicide bombers launched attacks around different parts of Kabul, including ISAF/NATO headquarters, Afghan Parliament building, and the whole of the diplomatic quarter. The fighting is still ongoing and so far there has been a large loss of the enemy," the Islamist militia said. NATO's International Security Assistance Force confirmed "multiple attacks across Kabul" in up to se...

The American campaign in Afghanistan suffered a double blow Thursday: The Taliban broke off talks with the U.S., and President Hamid Karzai demanded NATO troops immediately pull out of rural areas in the wake of the killing of 16 civilians.  The moves represent new challenges to America's strategy for ending the 10-year-old war at a time when support for the conflict is plummeting. Part of the U.S. exit strategy is to transfer authority gradually to Afghan forces. Another tack is to pull the Taliban into political discussions with the Afghan government, though it's unclear that there has been any progress since January.   Although Karzai has previously said that he wanted international troops to transition out of rural areas, the apparent call for an immediate exit is new. Karzai also said he now wants Afghan forces take the lead for countrywide security in 2013, in what appeared to be a move to push the U.S. toward an earlier drawdown. A statement released by Karzai's off...