Summary: Three suicide bombers killed 20 people in an attack on a construction firm in southeastern Afghanistan, with the Taliban claiming responsibility for the assault. … The Taliban claimed that it kidnapped 50 Afghan policemen in northeastern Afghanistan — part of the insurgents’ murder and intimidation campaign against anyone affiliated with the U.S.-backed government. … A provincial governor in southern Afghanistan said that seven civilians were accidentally killed when a NATO helicopter fired on two vehicles believed to be carrying Taliban fighters. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 27, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the U.S. and Russia sealed the first major nuclear weapons treaty in nearly two decades, agreeing to slash the former Cold War rivals’ warhead arsenals by nearly one-third and talking optimistically of eventually ridding the world of nuclear arms altogether.
Summary: Latest news and images from the conflict in Libya. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 26, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that former U.S.-backed prime minister Iyad Allawi and his secular, anti-Iranian coalition narrowly won Iraq’s parliamentary elections, edging out the bloc of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a coalition that includes anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which finished a strong third and could end up playing the role of kingmaker.
Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense news releases and iCasualties.org. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 25, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that unrest over sweeping federal health care legislation had turned to vandalism and threats, with bricks hurled through congressional Democrats’ windows, a propane line cut at the home of a congressman’s brother, and menacing phone messages left for lawmakers who supported the bill. In that context, I noted that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s longstanding pattern of incendiary rhetoric — such as calling on citizens to be “armed and dangerous” — was particularly disturbing, considering its potential for proliferating violent extremism and inciting acts of domestic terrorism in a time of festering economic uncertainty.
Summary: Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann is running for president. She is forming a presidential exploratory committee and will likely make an official announcement in June 2011. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 24, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that St. Cloud Times political reporter Mark Sommerhauser did what good reporters are supposed to: fact-check the public assertions of elected officials — and his preliminary finding is that “independent experts … are disputing [Michele] Bachmann’s abortion claims.”
Summary: Jared Lee Loughner, the accused in the January 8 shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, has been transferred to a federal Bureau of Prisons medical facility in Springfield, Missouri, to undergo a court-ordered mental evaluation to determine his competency to stand trial. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 23, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Summary: Did President Barack Obama violate the U.S. Constitution or federal law when he ordered the U.S. military to participate in enforcing a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing “all necessary measures,” including strikes by air and sea, to protect civilians from attacks by Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces? … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 22, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Republican delegates at Minnesota’s Sixth District GOP convention in St. Cloud on Saturday, March 20, 2010 voted unanimously to return politically paranoid conspiracy nut Michele Bachmann to Congress for a third term.
Summary: Graphic photos showing U.S. troops posing with dead Afghans have been published by the German newspaper Der Spiegel. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 21, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. military planners had little doubt that an Israeli air campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities would provoke Iranian retaliation against Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers allied with the United States; American efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border Iran, would come under threat — and there would be no way that any U.S. administration, after so many decades pledging undying support for Israel, could make a convincing claim in Muslim eyes that it was not complicit in the attack.
Summary: Moammar Gadhafi vowed a “long war” as allied forces launched a second night of strikes on Libya, inflicting heavy losses, while jubilant rebels who only a day before were in danger of being crushed by his forces now boasted they would bring him down. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 20, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that President Barack Obama’s foreign policy appeared to be working in one area vital to U.S. national security: Pakistan.
Summary: French warplanes fired the first shots in the broadest international military effort since the Iraq war, destroying government tanks and armored vehicles in the region of the rebels’ eastern stronghold, Benghazi. Hours later, British and U.S. warships and submarines launched more than 110 Tomahawk missiles against Gadhafi’s air defenses around the capital Tripoli and the western city of Misrata. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 19, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that seven years after the first bombs in the war to oust Saddam Hussein, Iraqis went about their business with little observance of the anniversary, looking to the future with a mixture of trepidation and hope.
Summary: NATO allies meeting in Brussels are drawing up plans to enforce a United Nations resolution authorizing military action to prevent the killing of Libyan civilians as Western leaders deliver an ultimatum to Moammar Gadhafi. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 18, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that a missile strike in Pakistan killed Hussein al-Yemeni, an al-Qaida leader believed to have been a key player in the suicide attack that killed seven CIA operatives at the CIA’s forward operating base Camp Chapman in Khost province, Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border on December 30, 2009.