Afghan officials say more than 50 Taliban insurgents have been killed in clashes with Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces in southern Uruzgan province.

Local Afghan officials say Taliban insurgents have overrun a second district in western Farah province.

A German engineer and four Afghans kidnapped in southern Afghanistan in mid-July have been freed in exchange for five Taliban prisoners, an official and a Taliban commander say.

The police chief of Afghanistan's Ghazni Province says an air strike by U.S.-led coalition forces has killed the Taliban commander who orchestrated the kidnapping of 23 South Korean Christian aid workers in July.

South Korea's embassy in Moscow denied reports that Seoul paid a ransom to Taliban insurgents to secure the release of Korean Christian volunteers in central Afghanistan.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan says more than 50 suspected Taliban insurgents have been killed in two days of fighting in southern Afghanistan.

NATO defense ministers agreed in Brussels on June 14-15 to step up the training of Afghan security forces and on measures to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan. NATO is increasingly faced with a dilemma in Afghanistan.

Afghans have protested for a fourth day today over the killing of civilians by U.S.-led coalition forces hunting Taliban fighters. More than five years after the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban and Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, public anger over the death of noncombatants has focused on the UN-backed Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, as well as NATO and other foreign troops.

Monday, April 23, 2007, Alhaji Umaru Yar' Adua, the presidential candidate of the ruling Peopes Democratic Party (PDP) has been declared the winner of the Presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Nigeria. But, the opposition parties have refused to accept the result of the polls. Both the local and international observers have called the elections undemocratic and a fraud.

A suicide bomber in Kabul has killed at least four civilians and wounded 12. The bomber, who was riding a motorcycle, set off the blast near the main market in the Afghan capital.

A suicide bomber today drove a car packed with explosives into a U.S. Embassy convoy near the Afghan capital, Kabul.