Quqnoos: Police have found the dead body of a 16-year-old girl, who police say was raped and then shot, in the south-eastern province of Khost (Afghanistan). The head of the province’s anti-crime branch, Gul Dad, said the body was found on Saturday and was handed over to the girl’s parents the next day. Full story ...

BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): Official statistics show that Afghanistan has the highest level of poverty among the South-Asian countries. On the basis of the official statistics, the level of poverty in Afghanistan is thirty to forty percent and around 20 million people are living under the line of poverty in this country. The government of Afghanistan, despite the support of the International Community, has not been able to do something considerable for decreasing poverty. Full story ...

Times Online: A Nato airstrike in Helmand this afternoon may have killed as many as 18 women and children, according to local officials in the province. Angry local people brought the bodies of at least six women and children, some of them badly disfigured, to the provincial capital Lashkargar and placed the bodies outside the house of the provincial governor, according to witnesses who spoke to T Full story ...

The Huffington Post: America's local allies in Afghanistan, the politicians and warlords who overthrew Taliban in 2001, are up to their turbans in the heroin trade. Drug money is the blood that courses through Afghanistan's veins and keeps the economy limping along. The U.S.-installed Karzai regime in Kabul propped up by US and NATO bayonets has only two sources of income: cash handouts from Washington, and the proceeds of drug dealing. Full story ...

The Belfast Telegraph: All kinds of horrors flop on to my Beirut doormat. There's The Independent's mobile phone bill, a slew of blood-soaked local Lebanese newspapers — “Saleh Aridi's blood consolidates (Druze) reconciliation”, was among the goriest of the past few days — and then there are files from the dark memory lane through which all Middle East history has to pass. Full story ...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Tens of residents of Sar-e-Pul accused Payinda Mohammad in the “Complaints Hearing Commission” of the Parliament, the representative of Sar-e-Pul in the parliament, for rape, murder, seizure of land and other crimes and claimed that Younis Qanooni, Speaker of the Parliament, supports this MP; but the other side called the allegations “false”. About nine months back, Payinda Mohammad’s son had also raped a 12-year old girl in Sar-e-Pul. Full story ...

The Globe and Mail: Canada's efforts in Afghanistan will carry a total price tag of about $14-billion to $18-billion by the time troops are withdrawn in 2011, about $1,500 extra for every household in Canada, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page reported today. Mr. Page's report says the real extra cost of the Canadian military mission — over and above what would have been spent for the upkeep of the military anyway — is billions more than Ottawa has estimated, and perhaps almost twice as high. Full story ...

IRIN: Afghanistan faces a deficit of two million tonnes of staple food - primarily wheat flour and rice - to feed millions of vulnerable people in the coming six months, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) has said. Drought has led to the failure of up to 90 percent of rain-fed agriculture and also damaged irrigated land, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Full story ...

TomDispatch.com: Washington spends about $100 million a day on this war -- close to $36 billion a year -- but only five cents of every dollar actually goes towards aid. From this paltry sum, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief found that "a staggering 40 percent has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and salaries." The economy is so underdeveloped that opium production accounts for more than half of the country's gross domestic product. Full story ...

New York Times: A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral” and casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban’s influence there, according to American officials familiar with the document. The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence from militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks from havens in Pakistan. Full story ...

The Nation Magazine: Seven years after the US invasion of Afghanistan, our devastated country is still chained to the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban; the country is like an unconscious body breathing its last. The US government and its allies exploited the plight of Afghan women to legitimate its so-called "war on terror" and attack on Afghanistan. The medieval and brutal regime of the Taliban was toppled, but instead of relying on Afghan people, the United States and its allies pushed us from the frying pan to the fire and brought the infamous criminals of the "Northern Alliance" into power--sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, who are as dark-minded, evil, anti-women and cruel as the Taliban. Full story ...

RAWA News: US/NATO bombs kill about ten times more Afghan civilians with a ton of our “precision” bombs than we killed Serbs in 1999. More than 80% of Afghan civilian deaths today caused by the US/NATO are due to close air support attacks. They (Afghans) are only worth one-tenth of an Alaskan sea otter rather than forty camels. We spend ten dollars on the military in Afghanistan to pur Full story ...

Telegraph.co.uk: In the diplomatic cable written by Fran?ois Fitou, the deputy French ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles is also quoted as saying that the coalition's military presence is "part of the problem not the solution". In the cable, dated Sept 2 and published in the investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Encha?ne, Sir Sherard is quoted as having said that "the current situation is bad. Security is worsening, but also corruption, and the current government has lost all credit." Full story ...

AFP: Mohammed Hashim Wahaaj, a large Afghan doctor with a bushy beard, thought he was going to die. He says his abductors were not from the extremist Taliban insurgency, who have kidnapped and killed scores of people they accuse of working for the government or its international allies. These were just criminals profiting from a climate of lawlessness and impunity in which government officials at the most senior levels are getting away with crime and corruption, the softly spoken doctor said. Full story ...

Reuters: Afghanistan is facing one of its worst food shortages in years as winter approaches, with prices of the staple wheat rising 60 percent in the first half of the year after Pakistan slapped export bans, a poor harvest and drought. Rising prices are hitting what is already one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than half of the population living below the poverty line. Househol Full story ...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Unknown armed men stole 20 to 30 historical relics including a Buddha statue from the National Museum of Herat. Three unknown armed men had entered the museum (in Arg Ikhtyaruddin of Herat) from the rooftop two nights back and stolen about 30 historical literary objects. The missing artifacts included a Buddha statue; two stone-made literary works from the Buddhism era; and other relics of the pre-Islamic and Islamic era, including some dishes of the Ghaznawyan era. Full story ...