WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that …

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A senior Iranian prosecutor accused three Americans detained on the border with Iraq of espionage on Monday, the first signal that Tehran intends to put them on trial.
The action could set up the Americans — who relatives say were hiking and strayed across the border from Iraq — as potential bargaining chips in Iran’s standoff with the West. The announcement came as Washington and Tehran were maneuvering over a deadlock in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alleged the three crossed Iran’s border illegally, …

SEOUL, South Korea — North and South Korean naval vessels exchanged fire in disputed waters off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday, leaving one North Korean vessel engulfed in flames, South Korean officials said.
The two Koreas accused each other of violating territorial waters, provoking the fierce two-minute skirmish. It was the first border fighting in seven years between the countries, which technically remain at war after fighting in the 1950-3 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a permanent peace treaty.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez ordered Venezuela’s military on Sunday to prepare for a possible armed conflict with Colombia, saying the country’s soldiers should be ready if the United States attempts to provoke a war between the South American neighbors.
“The best way to avoid war is preparing for it,” Chavez told military officers standing at attention during his weekly television and radio program.
Repeating an often-used military adage, he added, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Chavez told his supporters that President Barack Obama holds sway over Colombia’s …

Many Afghans believe foreign forces providing support for insurgents in the north.
By Ahmad Kawoosh in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No. 343, 26-Oct-09)
Persistent accounts of western forces in Afghanistan using their helicopters to ferry Taleban fighters, strongly denied by the military, is feeding mistrust of the forces that are supposed to be bringing order to the country.
One such tale came from a soldier from the 209th Shahin Corps of the Afghan National Army, fighting against the growing insurgency in Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan. Over several months, he had taken part in several …

CIA director Leon Panetta got into hot water with Congress, after he revealed an agency program to hunt down and kill terrorists. A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough (.pdf). Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state.
America’s military, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies already devote thousands of people and billions of dollars to tracking down top terrorists and insurgents. …

MILAN — An Italian court on Wednesday convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of orchestrating the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric here in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he said he was tortured.
In rendering the verdict, the judge in the case, Oscar Magi, acquitted three other Americans, including the former Rome station chief for the CIA, saying they were covered by diplomatic immunity.
The Americans were all tried in absentia but were represented throughout the trial by defense attorneys, most of them court-appointed. The U.S. …

Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.
The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown’s pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: “Our objective is to defeat the insurgency …

The Afghan minister of counter narcotics says foreign troops are earning money from drug production in Afghanistan.
General Khodaidad Khodaidad said the majority of drugs are stockpiled in two provinces controlled by troops from the US, the UK, and Canada, IRNA reported on Saturday.
He went on to say that NATO forces are taxing the production of opium in the regions under their control.
Afghanistan is the world’s biggest supplier of opium.
Drug production in the Central Asian country has increased dramatically since the US-led invasion eight years ago.

Western governments have suddenly transformed Afghan President Hamid Karzai from tainted candidate into legitimate victor.
A key factor was the decision by his main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, to withdraw from the second round of voting and not to boycott it.
A boycott might have meant that a second round had to go ahead, with further violence.