Los Angeles Times: Taliban fighters shot dead at least 12 workers clearing mines Saturday in southern Afghanistan, authorities said, part of a series of attacks that saw two U.S. troops killed and a top Afghan court official gunned down. Security in the capital, Kabul, has been stepped up as the Taliban have warned that attacks will continue as most foreign troops prepare to withdraw at the end of the month...      Full news...

PAN: The father of a rape victim on Saturday threatened with setting himself and his children on fire if the rapists were not awarded harsh punishment. Nooruddin, who had gone to neighbouring Iran in search of a livelihood, returned home in the Rustaq district of Takhar province after receiving news of his daughter’s rape.      Full news...

IWPR: An IWPR investigation has found that Ghor province in western Afghanistan is in the grip of around 40 warlords backed by thousands of paramilitaries. The armed groups they lead are accused of murder, kidnapping, gang rape, theft and drug trafficking, all carried out with impunity. The numerous groups typically range in size from 200 to 1,200 men, giving a total somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000.      Full news...

PAN: A pregnant girl, whose face was badly burnt by acid, has been found dead in the southern province of Helmand, an official said on Monday. Police spokesman Maj. Farid Ahmad Obaid told Pajhwok Afghan News the body was recovered a ruined house in Bashran area late on Sunday. The victim’s identity is yet to be established. The Bost Civil Hospital director said the victim was 17 years old and was pregnant.      Full news...

PAN: At least four people were killed and 20 others injured when unidentified people lobbed a hand grenade at a wedding party in northern Balkh province, an official said Sunday. Col. Abdur Razzaq Qadiri, the acting police chief for the province, told Pajhwok Afghan News the incident took place in Chamtal district on Saturday night.      Full news...

PAN: Foreign troops killed two civilians in the Daman district of southern Kandahar province on Saturday, an official claimed. The incident took place in the this afternoon in front of the airport on the Spin Boldak highway, police spokesman Zia Durrani told Pajhwok Afghan News. Foreigner soldiers abruptly opened fire on a car carrying civilians, killing two of them, he added.      Full news...

Gallup: As delegates from around the world depart the United Kingdom following Thursday’s London Conference on Afghanistan, a new Gallup World Poll underscores just how bleak life is for most Afghans. Already the worst in the world in 2013, Afghans’ ratings of their lives declined even further in 2014. More than six in 10 Afghans evaluate their lives poorly enough to be considered “suffering”      Full news...

PAN: Two women have been found dead in the Shirin Tagab district of northwestern Faryab province, an official said on Wednesday. District chief Syed Luqman Kharik told Pajhwok Afghan News unidentified gunman killed the two women in their house located in Sayyad area. He said the slain women were mother, 50, and daughter, 20. The reason of their killing is said to be a family dispute, he added.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: At least nine people, including two policemen, have been killed in a suicide attack at a funeral of a tribal elder in Afghanistan's Baghlan province, police officials have said. Aminullah Amarkhil, the police chief of the northern province, said at least 20 others were wounded in Monday’s attack in Burka District.      Full news...

RT: An Afghan mother, enraged by the Taliban’s fatal shooting of her policeman son, has allegedly helped to kill 25 militants. She rushed to a police outpost near her home upon hearing gunfire, before her adrenalin took over and she “began to shoot back.” The incident happened early in the morning on November 17 in the Balabolok district, in the Farah province of western Afghanistan, near the border with Iran.      Full news...

At least 30 people were injured after a bomb explosion at a mosque in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province on Friday. Those injured included the Mullah of the mosque, as officials said the explosives were planted under his seat and blew up while he was delivering the Friday sermon in Khogyani district’s mosque.      Full news...

Busines Insider Australia: Afghanistan’s new president has quietly gotten rid of the country’s ban on controversial night raids that are used to catch Taliban insurgents off-guard, The New York Times reports. The country’s previous president, Hamid Karzai, had mostly banned the raids even though the US government has said they’re key to catching insurgents.      Full news...

PAN: The death toll from Sunday’s suicide bombing during a volleyball match in southeastern Paktika province has risen to 61, with more than 66 wounded, officials said. The suicide bomber detonated his explosives as he mingled with the large crowd watching a volleyball match between the Yahyakhel and Yusufkhel districts as part of an inter-district volleyball tournament in the Yahyakhel district at around 4:30 pm.      Full news...

IWPR: Afghan security officials say Pakistan’s armed forces have fired nearly 6,000 rockets into the eastern Kunar province just in the past six months. Police say 14 civilians have been killed and more than 70 injured over that time, and over 1,000 families displaced from the worst-hit areas in the Dangam, Shaigal, Marawara and Sirkanay districts.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: It was five years ago today that Richard Colvin delivered his explosive testimony to a House of Commons committee examining Canada’s role in the torture of Afghan detainees. Colvin, a diplomat at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), had served in Afghanistan for 17 months, first as a senior representative at the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team run by Canada, and later as the acting ambassador in Kabul.      Full news...

PAN: Two women have been killed in northern Faryab province, increasing the number of females killed in the province this solar year to 18. Faryab crime branch police chief Col. Sarbeland Hasham told Pajhwok Afghan News a 37-year-old woman had been shot to death with a pistol in the Pashtunkot district.      Full news...

TOLOnews.com: Two young girls, one 12-years-old and one only three, were abducted and raped in Takhar province in just the past week, local officials have confirmed. The parents of the 12-year-old girl, who live in the Yangi Qala district, said their daughter was abducted by armed men late at night six days ago, then taken somewhere and raped.      Full news...

Khaama Press: The family of a gang-rape victim has called on President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani to ensure the perpetrators are tried as they face death threats from the armed gang. The woman was gang-raped a group of eight men in northeastern Badakhshan province of Afghanistan five years ago, Tolo News reported on Monday.      Full news...

IWPR: Rights groups in central Afghanistan have raised concerns about a rising tide of violence against women in this part of the country. About 100 people, mainly women, met in the town of Bamyan on September 28 to quiz local officials and rights organisations on what action they were taking against a rising tide of violence against women in this part of Afghanistan.      Full news...

PAN: Increasing rocket and magnetic bomb attacks have worried Kabul residents, who believe lack of deterrence and coordination among security forces allows such assaults. This last week saw six magnetic bombs exploding and as many rockets landing in the heavily-fortified central capital, leaving four people dead and 16 others wounded.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: Anti-war campaigners said the UK’s mission in Afghanistan had failed and had left a legacy of tens of thousands of civilian deaths as well as a series of unanswered questions. British troops today handed Camp Bastion over to Afghan forces - bringing to an end their bloody campaign in Helmand province - by lowering the Union Jack for the last time.      Full news...

Khaama Press: An Afghan woman named Zahra ran away with a young man after her father forced her to marry a 65-year-old villager. She and her lover were caught after almost two years and both were jailed for adultery. Adultery is prohibited in Islam and Afghanistan is a country with 99% people.      Full news...

International Business Times: The Obama Administration has been given a December deadline to explain why it has withheld more than 2,000 graphic images depicting Iraqi and Afghanistan detainees being tortured by the US military. A federal judge has ordered the US government to explain, one photograph at a time, why it blocked the images from being released to the public.      Full news...

The Killid Group: While the process of disarming local commanders has stretched over six years little has changed on the ground in Kunduz, Ghazni and Bamyan. Locals complain of harassment and extortion at the hands of armed gunmen - both individuals and members of the Afghan Local Police (ALP).      Full news...

Stars and Stripes: Mohammad Wazir is 12. Or maybe 13. He doesn’t know for sure. One thing is certain: Growing up in rural Helmand province, Mohammad has seen more war than anyone should, let alone a young boy.      Full news...

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Afghanistan is the most drone bombed country in the world. The US has been using its Predator and Reaper drones to kill people in Afghanistan since November 2001. Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, featured this week in a report by the Remote Control project, has found more than 1,000 drone attacks hit the country from the start of 2008 to the end of October 2012.      Full news...

The Killid Group: A non-governmental group, New Afghanistan Women Association (NAWA), says crimes against women and children have increased because of continued official indifference and a law enforcement system that looks the other way to help the perpetrators. NAWA’s new research in six provinces – Kunduz, Jowzjan, Herat, Balkh, Takhar and Sar-i-Pul – shows a 30 percent increase in rape cases. Shafiqa Habibi, director of the non-governmental women’s group, says in most cases the abusers were “powerful individuals, commanders and irresponsible gunmen” or the relatives of the victims. “They don’t fear punishment.”      Full news...

PAN: Powerful individuals, illegal commanders and armed men were involved in most of 245 sexual abuse cases occurred in various provinces over the past six months, a survey said on Wednesday. The survey by the New Afghanistan Women Association (NAWA) was conducted in Kunduz, Takhar, Jawzjan, Herat, Balkh and Sar-i-Pul provinces, interviewing 2,000 people including women.      Full news...

The Killid Group: According to a folk story, Ghazni was once the most prosperous of cities but the gins destroyed it one night. On Aug 4 the Taleban detonated trucks piled with explosives to attack Ghazni Police and the Afghan National Directorate of Security (Intelligence).      Full news...

PAN: A female journalist has been stabbed to death in broad daylight in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province, officials said. Palwasha Tokhi, who worked for the Bayan Radio station in Balkh, came under attack inside her house near the Hazrat Ali (RA) mausoleum in the 3rd police district late on Tuesday.      Full news...