AFP: Women living in Afghanistan's safest region are retreating behind the veil amid fears they are being stalked by a resurgent Taliban determined to trample their rights. Human rights groups are concerned that plans by the Afghan government to make peace with the Taliban could lead to an erosion of women's liberties. But as attacks escalate across the previously peaceful north, and the insurgency's footprint expands, women are losing confidence that their hard-won rights are inviolable.      Full news...

ISN Security Watch: A recent survey by Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) shows a sharp expansion in corruption in Afghan society. Most Afghans now see the payment of bribes as a routine part of obtaining government services. In the three years since IWA came out with its previous corruption survey, the amount paid in bribes more than doubled, the watchdog group found. Afghans paid an estimated $1 billion in bribes in 2009, whereas IWA pegged the figure in its 2006 survey at $466 million.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of the eastern province of Nangarhar are worried about deteriorating security, blaming corrupt officials and "irresponsible" foreign forces for the surge in violence. Over the past one-and-a-half months, there have been at least 28 incidents of violence in Nangarhar, including three rocket attacks on the provincial capital, 11 roadside bombs targeting NATO vehicles and at least three suicide attacks, according to a Pajhwok tally.      Full news...

AP: The inspector general investigating fraud, waste and abuse in the USD51 billion Afghanistan reconstruction program has received a failing grade from his peers. The council of government auditors who reviewed the work asked Attorney General Eric Holder to consider suspending or rescinding law enforcement powers of the Afghanistan reconstruction watchdog.      Full news...

The Independent: Women in Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan say they are once again being threatened, attacked and forced out of jobs and education as fears rise that their rights will be sacrificed as part of any deal with insurgents to end the war in Afghanistan. Women have reported attacks and received letters warning of violence if they continue to work or even contact radio stations to request songs.      Full news...

CNN: More U.S. soldiers killed themselves last month than in recent Army history, according to Army statistics released Thursday, confounding officials trying to reverse the grim trend. The statistics show that 32 soldiers killed themselves in June, the highest number in a single month since the Vietnam era. Twenty-one of them were on active duty, while 11 were in the National Guard or Army Reserve in an inactive status.      Full news...

The Wall Street Journal: Beware Taliban revisionism. You’re going to hear much more of it in the coming months as policy makers from Kabul to Washington seeking to reintegrate Taliban fighters try to explain why the enemy isn’t so bad after all. Bombs that slaughter civilians, acid attacks that disfigure school girls, assassinations of women in public life-all of this will be swept under the carpet.      Full news...

IRIN: Esmatullah, 24, has been injecting heroin for over two years but he is unaware that sharing needles could infect him with HIV, hepatitis or other highly contagious blood-borne diseases. “I don’t know anything about these diseases and how they’re transferred from one person to another,” he told IRIN; he had recently been deported from Iran where he had become an addict.      Full news...

Care2.com: An article from Time poignantly describes the conditions inside the women's ward of the Istiqlal Hospital burn unit in Kabul, where young women who have attempted to commit suicide by self-immolation lie unconscious or in serious pain. According to the Ministry of Women's Affairs, 103 women who set themselves on fire between March 2009 and March 2010...      Full news...

AFP: This year has been the most violent since the Afghan war began in 2001 and civilian deaths have risen slightly with the increased insecurity, a local rights group said Monday. A massive US-led increase in troops has failed to quell the Taliban-led insurgency, Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said. “In terms of insecurity, 2010 has been the worst year since the demise of the Taliban regime in late 2001,” it said.      Full news...

ANI: The United States is building secret bases in Afghanistan from which they intend to attack Russia, said Kremlin officials. According to the Daily Express, the claim has emerged in the wake of the most elaborate spy swap since the Cold War, which saw 10 Moscow-controlled sleeper agents traded for four Russians spying for the West.      Full news...

Tribune Media Services Inc.: As Gen. David Petraeus assumed his new command in Afghanistan earlier this month, he took up a strategy that has already failed - though not for the reasons most people assume. Certainly, as most everyone knows, the battle plan appears hopeless. Every night in Marjah, Taliban killers post "night letters" in mosques and other public places, warning city residents they will be killed if they cooperate with the Americans.      Full news...

AFP: International troops fighting the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan killed six civilians, NATO said Saturday, a day after conceding that six Afghan soldiers had died in a "friendly fire" incident. Civilian casualties are an incendiary topic with Afghans, who increasingly regard the presence of international troops in their country as the main cause of violence that has wracked Afghanistan for almost nine years.      Full news...

The Independent: Samia is a rape victim, but now it's the morning of her wedding. By late afternoon, she will be married in a private ceremony in Karte Se, Kabul. One of the 150 guests at this extraordinary marriage ceremony will be the activist and suspended MP Malalai Joya: Samia's handsome husband-to-be, Faramarz, has been one of Ms Joya's bodyguards for more than four years.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Corruption has soared in recent years as the United States and other international donors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Afghanistan, giving the Taliban a powerful tool to delegitimize the Afghan government, according to a new national survey. The survey, which was scheduled to be released Thursday by the Kabul-based anti-corruption group Integrity Watch Afghanistan, suggests that Afghans see their country’s police and judicial officials as the most corrupt in the government      Full news...

PAN: Clerics in northern Badakhshan province Wednesday issued a resolution, asking women to refrain from venturing out of home without an immediate male relative. The resolution was issued by members of the provincial ulema council members, who met in the Juram district two weeks after unidentified gunmen shot dead two women allegedly involved in prostitution.      Full news...

ABC News: Brigadier General Mohammed Asif Jabarkhel sits with folded arms in his office, just a few steps away from the security checkpoint at Kabul International Airport. "Of course I know what's going on here," the 59-year-old head of the airport's customs police grumbles from beneath his thick moustache as a fan whirs in the background. "But, in this country, who's allowed to speak the truth?"      Full news...

The Indian Express: More than USD 4.2 billion in cash has moved from Kabul airport during the past three-and-a-half years, far exceeding the earlier estimate and raising fresh concerns about corruption in the war-torn country. “Our records show that USD 4.2 billion has been transferred in cash through Kabul International Airport alone during the last three-and-a-half years,” Omar Zakhilwal, the Afghan Finance Minister wrote in a letter to Nita Lowey, a US Congresswoman.      Full news...

CNN: Violence isn't the only major problem in Afghanistan. Corruption is also hampering the war effort. Last week, US lawmakers voted to cut billions of dollars in aid to the Afghan government because of corruption. But Afghan officials say Western contractors are also to blame. In Kabul, a film-maker has his own unique take on the issue. Atia Abawi has that.      Full news...

The Canadian Press: Master Cpl. Jody Mitic was a sniper on patrol with his unit in Kandahar province in January 2007 when he stepped on a land mine and lost both legs below the knee. In the split second it took for the charge to explode, Mitic's life changed instantly, irrevocably. Mitic is one of the more than 500 Canadian soldiers who have been wounded in action in Afghanistan; even more suffer from "invisible wounds" that range from mild depression to debilitating post-traumatic stress syndrome, experts say.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: After nine years of war the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan lacks support at home and is widely recognized as a drain on the domestic economy in a time of severe economic contraction. The billions of dollars in U.S. economic assistance to the Hamid Karzai government has created an unsustainable class of Afghans who are dependent upon the American largesse and military presence that would be impossible to sustain by local taxes.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghan police clashed on Tuesday with dozens of stone-throwing protesters who gathered at a religious school on the outskirts of the capital to complain about arrests by foreign forces. Reuters witnesses saw police firing rounds into the air and on the ground to disperse the protesters, and also what appeared to be three lifeless bodies being carried away by a police vehicle.      Full news...

BBC News: Meet Sorarya and you meet “attitude”. It has something to do with the way she wears her red tunic and trousers, her short cropped black leather jacket, and the way she chews gum and rolls her eyes. “What are you here for?” I ask as we sit in a makeshift beauty parlour, surrounded by a group of Afghan women in less flamboyant attire. “Should I tell her?” she asks the other women with a mischievous grin.      Full news...

ANP/AFP: Afghanistan’s top prosecutor Tuesday accused US ambassador Karl Eikenberry of threatening to have him removed from his job if he did not take action against an Afghan banker allegedly involved in fraud. "Against all diplomatic ethics, the US ambassador tells me: “If you don't jail him, you must resign,” Alko told reporters, citing a recent conversation with Eikenberry.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Top officials in President Hamid Karzai’s government have repeatedly derailed corruption investigations of politically connected Afghans, according to U.S. officials who have provided Afghanistan’s authorities with wiretapping technology and other assistance in efforts to crack down on endemic graft. In recent months, the U.S. officials said, Afghan prosecutors and investigators have been ordered to cross names off case files, prevent senior officials from being placed under arrest and disregard evidence against executives of a major financial firm suspected of helping the nation’s elite move millions of dollars overseas.      Full news...

VOA: NATO says a joint Afghan-international force killed a Taliban commander and several armed individuals in southern Afghanistan, but local villagers say the dead are all civilians. In eastern Afghanistan, officials say eight civilians, including women and children, were killed in a roadside bombing in Ghazni province on Monday.      Full news...

The Guardian: The Obama administration has awarded $220m (£146m) in new contracts to the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater to provide security in Afghanistan. This is despite accusations against the company of murder and indiscriminate killings of civilians in Iraq and investigations into alleged corruption and sanctions busting. The contracts have drawn stinging criticism in Congress and assertions that because of Blackwater's reputation for indifference to innocent lives it will jeopardise the mission in Afghanistan.      Full news...

AFP: CIA director Leon Panetta has estimated there are only 50 to 100 Al Qaeda militants operating inside Afghanistan, as US forces work to “flush out” mastermind Osama bin Laden. Mr Panetta said US forces had killed or captured at least half the Al Qaeda leadership, making the terrorist group the weakest it has been since the 9/11 attacks. The spy chief estimated Al Qaeda's numbers have shrunk dramatically in Afghanistan.      Full news...

AFP: NATO reported on Sunday the 91st foreign soldier killed in what has been a record month for international troop deaths in Afghanistan. In other violence, more than two dozen rebels were killed across the troubled nation, authorities said separately. In all, 311 soldiers have died in Afghanistan so far this year, with the June toll by far the deadliest of any month since the war began in late 2001.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Four American troops were reported killed and the bodies of 11 Afghan men, some beheaded, were found in rising violence across Afghanistan. Mohammad Khan, deputy police chief in Uruzgan province, said a villager in the Bagh Char area of Khas Uruzgan district spotted the bodies Friday in a field and called police. "They were killed because the Taliban said they were spying for the government, working for the government," he said.      Full news...