President Bush's choice to head U.S. public diplomacy programs says he will work to ensure that the United States is able to aggressively counter Islamic extremist messages. But in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee considering his nomination, James Glassman, nominated as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, said the U.S. should not employ propaganda in these efforts. VOA's Dan Robinson reports from Capitol Hill.

Britain is facing a generational battle against Islamist extremism that could take up to 30 years to win, a former British Navy chief turned security minister said in an interview.

Last night some 200 people, belonging to Gray Wolves extreme movement, destroyed and set to fire the Jardin de Babylone café owned by an Iraqi Armenian in the neighborhood Saint-Josse-Ten-Noode of Brussels.

A Russian ultranationalist group has posted a video on its websites that appears to show the execution-style killing of two men from Central Asia and the Caucasus.

President Bush called Afghan President Hamid Karzai from the White House earlier Thursday to reaffirm the strong relationship shared between the two countries.

Investigators from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) questioned opposition leader Garry Kasparov for four hours today. The questioning came less than a week after Kasparov was detained and released during antigovernment protests in Moscow on April 14.

The Moscow City Court has declared the opposition National Bolshevik Party to be an extremist organization. The ruling late on April 19 allows the authorities to make it illegal to publicly support the party.

As a court began considering if a banned opposition group is an extremist organization, lower house of Russian parliament approved the legal amendments toughening criminal punishment for extremism.