The Telegraph: The British Army says it is "taking seriously" claims that children were shot and several adult villagers had their throats cut during a secret military operation by unidentified forces in Helmand province.      Full news...

IWPR: Residents of a southern village tell of a night of violence at the hands of foreign and Afghan soldiers. Abdul Manaan claims he suffered slashes to his neck during a nighttime raid which locals say was carried out by a mixed force of foreign and Afghan troops helicoptered into Toube on November 18. Eyewitnesses say the soldiers killed 18 civilians in an attack that was brutal even by the standards of the Afghan conflict.      Full news...

Daily Mail: Shown together for the first time, this is Osama Bin Laden and the son who rejected his terror creed and went on to marry an English parish councillor. Omar Bin Laden, now 26, was just 15 when he was pictured with the father he describes as gentle and kind, with a love of football and a great sense of humour.      Full news...

Pajhwak Afghan News: Residents of Wazikhwa district of the Pakthika province live in constant fear of being struck by Taliban insurgents. "Visiting this area is not without risk," says Khair Mohammad, an elderly person, standing by a deserted shop.      Full news...

BBC News: Digging into what the latest opinion poll really means, security still came out as the main concern, but of those polled who said things were moving in the wrong direction, the economy was at the top of their list.      Full news...

By Marc W. Herold: Thought and language, which reflect reality in a way different from that of perception, are the key to the nature of human consciousness. Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of human consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness...      Full news...

OneWorld: US war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they're planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq.      Full news...

PoliticalAffairs.net: A spate of recent news reports indicates that the NATO occupation of Afghanistan is becoming a deeper disaster. It has been revealed that many victims of the Nov. 6 bombing in northern Baghlan province were children shot by government bodyguards. About 77 people died (including four members of the Afghan parliament), and another 100 were injured. According to an internal United Nations security report obtained on Nov. 19, bodyguards for the politicians shot at least 100 rounds of gunfire "deliberately and indiscriminately" into the crowd after the suicide bombing, and that schoolchildren bore "the brunt of the onslaught at close range."      Full news...

AFP: International war planes going after insurgents in northeastern Afghanistan struck a road construction camp and killed 14 workers, leaving many unrecognisable, officials said Wednesday.      Full news...

Reuters: Too much aid to Afghanistan is wasted -- soaked up in contractors' profits, spent on expensive expatriate consultants or squandered on small-scale, quick-fix projects, a leading British charity said on Tuesday. Despite more than $15 billion of aid pumped into Afghanistan since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, many Afghans still suffer levels of poverty rarely seen outside sub-Saharan Africa.      Full news...

The Ottawa Citizen: The Defence Department is keeping secret the names of dozens of companies that received almost $42 million worth of contracts in Afghanistan. However, an analysis by CanWest News Service suggests that more than $1.1 million in business has been awarded to an Afghan company that bears the same name as one of Kandahar's most infamous warlords.      Full news...

The Herald Sun: THE US military is experiencing a "suicide epidemic" with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS. At least 6256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 - an average of 17 a day - the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.      Full news...

Associated Press: The Veterans Affairs Department is ramping up its suicide prevention programs. The VA has determined there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the Afghan war and the end of 2005.      Full news...

Daily Telegraph: Nato has "lost in Afghanistan" and its failure to bring stability there could provoke a regional sectarian war "on a grand scale", according to Lord Ashdown.      Full news...

USA TODAY: The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade, or nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate scheduled for release today.      Full news...

The Independent: President George Bush will have spent more than $1 trillion on military adventures by the time he leaves office at the end of next year, more than the entire amount spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.      Full news...

Reuter: Eleven members of an Afghan family have been killed in an air strike by Western forces near Kabul, the head of a provincial council said on Tuesday.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Helmand, with a population of 1.4 million and an area roughly the size of Switzerland, is among the largest of Afghanistan's southwestern provinces. Its vast expanse of desert and arid mountains border Pakistan and stretch to within 100 kilometers of Iran. At the heart of the battle for Afghanistan's future, Helmand also is inarguably the country's most troubled province.      Full news...

AFP: The US-led "war on terror" has been a "disaster" and Washington and its allies must change their policy in Iraq and Afghanistan to defeat Al-Qaeda, an independent global security think tank said.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Thousands in the eastern Kunar province took to the streets to demand removal of military bases from residential areas in face of mounting civilian casualties in attacks and clashes between militants and Afghan and foreign troops.      Full news...

BBC News: A woman and child were among the civilians killed in a raid by a US-led coalition force against a Taliban hideout in Afghanistan, officials say. The coalition said its forces responded to an attack by destroying the building in which militants were hiding.      Full news...

Dawn: A US congressional panel was warned on Thursday that the Bush administration's Afghan policy had totally failed and Afghanistan was on its way to be lost forever.      Full news...

AP via CNN: Violence in Afghanistan has surged this year with suicide bombings inflicting an especially high toll on civilians, a new United Nations report says. The report said Afghanistan is averaging 550 violent incidents a month, up from an average of 425 last year. It said three-fourths of suicide bombings are targeting international and Afghan security forces, but suicide bombers also killed 143 civilians through August.      Full news...

The Canadian Press: Afghan President Hamid Karzai's speech to Parliament last year was written by the Canadian military as part of an "elaborately staged political stunt," the NDP is charging.      Full news...

CanWest News Service: Afghans shouting "Death to Canada" and other slogans blocked a main road in the hotly disputed Zhari District of Kandahar during a protest Wednesday against the rule of President Hamid Karzai and a house-to-house search operation by foreign forces that the demonstrators said had resulted in the death of two brothers who were mullahs.      Full news...

Reuters: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost at least $190 billion in 2008, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, making it the most expensive year in the conflicts since they were launched by President George W. Bush.      Full news...

AFP: NATO warplanes killed six Afghan civilians, most of them women and children, in an air strike during a battle with Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, a district governor told AFP Friday.      Full news...

CBS News: American doctor Dave Warner is on a mission in eastern Afghanistan to show people back home how billions of taxpayer dollars sent here are being wasted.      Full news...

The Los Angeles Times: Former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld says in the current edition of GQ magazine that the war in Afghanistan has been "a big success," with people living in freedom and life "improved on the streets." To anyone working in the country, there is only one possible, informed response: What Afghanistan is the man talking about?      Full news...

Melbourne Herald Sun: AFGHANISTAN is sliding ever further into conflict with more than half of the country affected and several regions out of reach of humanitarian aid, a senior international Red Cross official warned today.      Full news...