Bali bomber detained

Indonesian authorities have detained a militant suspected of involvement in the 2005 triple suicide Bali bombing that killed more than 200 people. Faiz Fauzan of the Jemaah Islamiah militant group denies the charges. Authorities claim he attended the planning stage meetings and had met with Azahari Husin who constructed the bombs.

Iraqi women targeted

Mobile phone use is becoming a scourge for Iraqi women. Husbands and boyfriends are recording sexually explicit conversations by their partners. The recordings are then used as blackmail and distributed. In 2004, a boy distributed mobile phone video footage of a 17-year old girl have sex. Two days later her father murdered her. There are 350 known similar cases though experts believe many more go unreported. "Women and girls in Kurdistan live in a dangerous situation because they are attacked on a daily basis in the name of honor. No one is defending them," said Najiba Mahmood from the NGO Civilisation Development Organization based in Sulaimaniya.

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US officials plan to dispatch an additional 7,000 American troops by early next year to make up for a NATO deficit.  Once dispatched, the number of American troops will reach above 40,000, the highest since the war began. Two-thirds of the coalition forces in Afghanistan will be American. There are currently 62,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan of which 34,000 are American. 18,000 American troops operate under US command while the remaining 16,000 operate under NATO. A senior US administration official described the plan as "the re-Americanization" of the war.

Hizbollah training Iraqis in Iran

Information obtained through US interrogations has led American authorities to believe that the Lebanese based group, Hizbollah, is training Iraqis in a camp outside Tehran. The interrogation report also claims Iranians are offering assistance to the militants to conduct the trainings. The militants then return to Iraq to train others. Four Shia militants were interrogated separately and apparently provided the same information about the camps.

An inside job - assassination attempt on Karzai

The attempt to assassinate President Hamid Karzai during last week's parade ended with three deaths and eleven wounded. Yesterday, Afghanistan's defense minister released a statement saying a police captain and an army officer were involved. The two allegedly coordinated the attack with al-Qaida though the Taliban had claimed responsibility. On the morning of the parade, Afghan authorities discovered a cache of suicide vests.

Indian officials quit en masse

Some 64-district politicians in the eastern state of Bihar resigned following a series of threats from Maoist insurgents. "Many of them have cited threats to their lives as reasons behind their resignations," said a senior government official. Maoists in the area claim to be fighting for land rights for poor villagers. The departing officials include Janata Dal and Bharatiya Janata Party chiefs from the Islampur Assembly constituency.

Dalai Lama aides talk with China

Envoys from the Dalai Lama held talks with Chinese officials yesterday over the recent riots in Tibet. Chinese media and Beijing have labeled the Tibetan leader as a separatist bent on fomenting violence. Some speculate that yesterday's negotiations are more of a publicity stunt by Beijing to gloss over bad press in the lead up to the Olympics.

Taking advice from Lawrence of Arabia

Journalist Robert Fisk reviews the memoirs, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T.E. Lawrence in the New Statesman. Lawrence, according to Fisk, was a man betrayed by his own sense of duty and a depression that turned him into a cynic. But aside from revealing Lawrence's darker side, the memoirs disclose a series of warnings and predictions that ring strikingly true for today's Iraq war. Lawrence warned that successful insurgencies operate as a "vapour" and blend in with the population. He also wrote that such an insurgency must have as an opponent "a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfill the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space." The British invasion of Iraq in the early 20th century was followed by an insurgency. At the time, the British, much like their American contemporaries in 2003, believed they would be greeted as liberators.  The British army was also mired in heavy fighting in Fallujah and in Najaf.