NEW YORK – Charging that U.S. private security contractors are "mafia-like groups" being financed by U.S. taxpayers to carry out "terrorist activities" with the support of the U.S. government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a four-month phaseout of all private security companies in his embattled country.

WASHINGTON — Pro-Israeli journalist Jeffrey Goldberg's article in "The Atlantic" magazine was evidently aimed at showing why the Barack Obama administration should worry that it risks an attack by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran in the coming months unless it takes a much more menacing line toward Iran's nuclear program.

TEHRAN — Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that any talks with arch-foe the United States would take place only if Washington drops "sanctions and threats" against Tehran.

JERUSALEM — Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu was freed from jail on Sunday after serving 11 weeks behind bars for breaking the terms of his release and meeting a foreigner, a prison official said.

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama has suffered a sharp drop in popularity in the Arab world over the past year, and Iran may be reaping the benefits, according to a major new survey of public opinion in five Arab countries released here Thursday.

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) — Omar Khadr was only 15 when he was captured by U.S. forces in 2002 in Afghanistan. Now, eight years later, the 23-year-old is on trial in Guantanamo Bay, in the first military commission trial since the beginning of the Barack Obama administration.