U.S. Senator John McCain arrived on an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Thursday, a coalition spokeswoman told CNN.
The Arizona Republican is expected to meet with U.S. forces. He is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
FULL STORYBy Ben Brumfield
An explosion rocked Kabul on Saturday, hours after the newly appointed U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel landed in the Afghan capital.
At least nine people were killed and 14 others injured, police said.
A suicide bomber apparently targeted the Afghan ministry of defense, said Charlie Stadtlander, ISAF spokesman.
By Dugald McConnell and Brian Todd
The amateur video shows men, shirtless and seeming dangerously drunk, rolling on the ground or staggering near a counter top covered with booze bottles. Another part of the video shows a man babbling incoherently with a syringe nearby.
This is not a scene at a college frat house. It is a video of employees of an American security contractor working in Kabul, Afghanistan.
"It reminded me of times I'd visit my friends going to college that were in fraternities," said John Melson, a former employee of Jorge Scientific who was based at that villa in Kabul on assignment to support efforts to train Afghan security personnel.
The images in this video are now part of a lawsuit by two former employees of Jorge Scientific who allege that contractors with the firm were careless with their guns, abused local staffers, wrecked cars, destroyed furniture, and often could not perform their duties due to drunkenness.
FULL STORYBy Mike Mount
A spate of violent attacks in Afghanistan spurred on by an anti-Muslim video made in the Unites States, as well as continued attacks on coalition forces by their Afghan partners, is putting a tumultuous start on the first step of the U.S. handover of authority to the Afghan government.
The attacks come at a sensitive time as the United States removes the last of the more than 30,000 surge troops the Obama administration rushed in to quash an increasingly powerful Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan in 2010.
Those remaining troops are scheduled to be out of the country by the end of this month, bringing the U.S. troop level down to about 68,000 in addition to other NATO allies and Afghan forces.
FULL POST
By the CNN Wire Staff
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned a NATO airstrike this week that a provincial official says killed women and children, in a statement that came just as U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived Thursday in Kabul for talks.
A provincial official has said among the dead in the airstrike were civilians, while the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said initial reports revealed only two injuries.
ISAF is aware of the claims of civilian casualties and was looking into what took place, a spokesman for the coalition said.
By Mike Mount
President Barack Obama and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement that outlines cooperation between their countries after the withdrawal of U.S.-led international forces in 2014.
With little detail and few specifics in the document, U.S. officials say it paints a broad stroke of what the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship will look like from 2014 through 2024.
Officials said the document highlights military, diplomatic and economic relationships between the two countries without offering specifics on troops levels, economic assistance and the status of diplomatic relations.
With some 88,000 U.S. troops operating inside Afghanistan, the document does state that there will be no permanent U.S. bases in the country after the 2014 withdrawal, officials said. The agreement also allows for the possibility of U.S. troops staying in Afghanistan beyond 2014 to train and conduct counterterrorism operations to go after what a White House fact sheet described as "targeting the remnants of al Qaeda."
FULL POST
By Adam Levine
Afghanistan's president said the attacks this weekend in his country represent a "serious intelligence failure" by NATO and other allies.
President Hamid Karzai made the comment about the coordinated attacks in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan in an interview with Christiane Amanpour during the premiere of her new CNN International program, “Amanpour."
"This is indicative, ma'am, of serious intelligence failure, especially an intelligence failure of our allies in NATO and others, because of the equipment that they have, because of the resources that they have, because of the time that they've spent in this part of the world," Karzai said in the interview, which aired Monday. FULL POST