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Obama expresses 'deep regret' over Koran burning AFP – 5 hrs ago US President Barack Obama sent Afghan President Hamid Karzai a letter of apology over the burning of copies of the Koran overseen by a US officer at a US military base, Karzai's office said Thursday. Obama said the incident was unintentional and pledged a full investigation, the president's office said, as fierce anti-US protests swept the nation in which at least 14 people have died, including two American soldiers. "I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident," Obama wrote in the letter presented to Karzai...

Unmanned US strike aircraft killed six Islamist extremists in an attack on a compound in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. The strike took place in the Datta Khel region in North Waziristan, a region that hosts a headquarters for al Qaeda's Shadow Army. "Two missiles fired by a US drone hit a compound which was being used by militants," a senior Pakistani security official told Dawn. "One missile hit a compound and the other hit a vehicle outside it. Six militants were killed." No senior al Qaeda or Taliban commanders have been reported killed in the strike at...

Yet, of the Americans who died last week in the suicide bombing at the CIA’s most sensitive outpost in Afghanistan, it is the seventh whose presence has raised the most urgent questions as the US scrambles to repair — and avenge — the damage done to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. According to a security official in Kabul with close ties to the CIA, when Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi carried out his deadly mission at Forward Operating Base Chapman, he managed to kill the agency’s deputy head of station for the whole of Afghanistan. The senior agent was waiting...

As President Obama prepares to unveil his long-deliberated war strategy, the Taliban's supreme commander declared today that U.S.-led forces would find only defeat, dishonor and "a bed of thorns" in Afghanistan. The warning, contained in a statement by Mullah Mohammed Omar , the movement's reclusive leader, was issued on the eve of one of the year's most important Muslim holidays, Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice. It marks the end of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which is made by millions of observant Muslims. In his missive -- punctuated by the flowery phrases and high-flown rhetoric typically...

At about 45 seconds, the sniper ceases to exist.