Summary: Members of Afghanistan’s new peace council say releasing Taliban figures detained at Guantanamo Bay and scratching scores of others off the U.N. sanctions list would jump-start peace talks aimed at ending the 9-year-old war. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 12, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Rep. Michele Bachmann told bloggers at an event in Washington: “Quite honestly I don’t even know anything about MSNBC.” To refresh Bachmann’s memory, MSNBC is the cable network on which she dishonored her office on October 17, 2008, when she called for McCarthy-like witch hunts to find out which members of Congress are “pro-America or anti-America.”

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: The Taliban’s top military commander has been captured in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces. The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 17, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that North Korea marked the 67th birthday of its leader, Kim Jong Il, by claiming it had the right to “space development” — a term it has used in the past to disguise a missile test as a satellite launch.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: The U.S. is preparing a major attack on the Taliban, the militants are being squeezed in their Pakistani sanctuaries, and the Afghan government is trying to draw them into peace talks. … NATO is sending reinforcements to Kandahar, 260 miles southwest of Kabul, ahead of a major offensive to reverse Taliban gains in southern Afghanistan. … Suicide bomb kills 6 in Afghan south. A bomb on a parked motorcycle exploded on the outskirts of the holy city of Karbala, killing at least 20 Shiite pilgrims and wounding 110. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 5, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that with the reduction of violence in Iraq following a U.S. troop “surge” and other measures, foreign militants were flooding into Afghanistan to join Taliban insurgents battling Afghan and international troops. He also reported that Father Bruce Wollmering OSB, monk and priest, died suddenly on February 4, 2009 at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn. Subsequently, on December 9, 2009, it was reported that former student Jeramiah (Jerry) McCarthy had filed a fraud lawsuit against St. John’s Prep School and Abbey for allegedly covering up sexual misconduct by Fr. Bruce Wollmering since the mid-1960s.

  ::  Read Comments (0)