IWPR: The competence and credibility of the Afghan judiciary is being called into serious question by two controversial convictions which have caused an international outcry. The two cases, the most recent concluded last month, concern alleged transgressions of Islamic law, with critics claiming the convictions are deeply flawed and should be overturned on appeal. Some have suggested that the cases expose what they see as the creeping Islamicisation of the judiciary, insisting that the bench is composed of religious hardliners with Taliban sympathies.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan is facing one of its worst food shortages in years as winter approaches, with prices of the staple wheat rising 60 percent in the first half of the year after Pakistan slapped export bans, a poor harvest and drought. Rising prices are hitting what is already one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than half of the population living below the poverty line. Households dependent on wage labour can afford to buy a quarter of the wheat they bought in 2007, according to the World Food Programme. This in a country where the majority of household wages are spent on basic foods such as cereals.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Unknown armed men stole 20 to 30 historical relics including a Buddha statue from the National Museum of Herat. Three unknown armed men had entered the museum (in Arg Ikhtyaruddin of Herat) from the rooftop two nights back and stolen about 30 historical literary objects. The missing artifacts included a Buddha statue; two stone-made literary works from the Buddhism era; and other relics of the pre-Islamic and Islamic era, including some dishes of the Ghaznawyan era.      Full news...

Xinhua: The war-torn Afghanistan has experienced a deadliest year in 2008 since the collapse of Taliban regime in late 2001 as so far this year more than 4,000 people including 1,445 civilians have been killed. Driving factors towards increasing instability, according to Afghans, is high rate of unemployment and poverty in the war-wrecked country. Many of those fighters joining Taliban insurgents are illiterate tribal people, young seminarians and low educated jobless youths.      Full news...

Canwest News Service: As Afghanistan's most senior and most famous female police officer, based in the country's ultra-conservative south, Lieut.-Col. Malalai Kakar knew she was a marked woman. On Sunday, two days after taking part in a Canadian event to mark the end of Islam's holiest month, insurgents grimly confirmed her fears, shooting Kakar dead as she left her house.      Full news...

Daily Times: Resurgent Taliban, according to a new report, “have turned much of Afghanistan into ‘No Go’ zones for aid workers and civilians”. The report, issued by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) this week, says the security situation in Afghanistan is assessed by most analysts as having deteriorated at a constant rate through 2007. Statistics show that although the numbers of incidents are higher than comparable periods in 2006, they show the same seasonal pattern.      Full news...

Online: Forty per cent of the civilian victims of recent military operations and fighting in Afghanistan are children and women, a local child protection agency said. The Afghan Children Protection Organization (ACPO) said in a statement that among 700 civilians killed in the past six months in conflict, 40 per cent were children and women.      Full news...

VOA: New U.N. figures show a sharp rise in the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan during the first eight months of this year, compared to the same period in 2007. The report was released by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.      Full news...

The New York Times: One of the most experienced Western envoys in Afghanistan said Sunday that conditions there had become the worst since 2001. He urged a concerted American and foreign response, even before a new American administration took office, to avoid “a very hot winter for all of us.”      Full news...

BBC: Elements in the Iranian state are sending weapons across the border to the Taliban in Afghanistan, a BBC investigation has uncovered. Taliban members said they had received Iranian-made arms from elements in the Iranian state and from smugglers.      Full news...

CounterPunch.com: The antiwar movement in the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore the war in Afghanistan without fading into irrelevance. The original aims of the war on terror have been resuscitated, and as Obama has repeatedly emphasized in recent months, its “central front” is shifting back to Afghanistan. The Afghan people have endured seven long years of misery thanks to U.S. occupation, and it is high time to take a principled stand against U.S. imperial aims in Central Asia. The war on Afghanistan is no more justified than the war on Iraq.      Full news...

Reuters: Seven years after the attacks on New York and Washington, the event that sparked off the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, many Afghans say life is no better and some say its worse. A recent spate of civilian deaths caused by U.S.-led air strikes has added salt to their wounds.      Full news...

PAN: Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament, has prepared a draft law which, when approved, will ban obscene movies, female dances and high-volume music at parties. Those indulging in such acts will be awarded deterrent punishments under the draft bill titled Law against Immoral Acts. The draft has been prepared in three chapters and 20 articles by a parliamentary commission tasked with countering drugs and immoral acts.      Full news...

Democracy Now: As violence escalates in Afghanistan, both Barack Obama and John McCain support sending more troops. “Both of them are wrong,” says Sonali Kolhatkar, host of Uprising on Pacifica radio station KPFK and co-author of the book Bleeding Afghanistan. “You really cannot solve the situation in Afghanistan by throwing more troops at it, because over the last several years tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan have not managed to do anything other than worsen the war.”      Full news...

Quqnoos: Unknown militants have killed a drum musician in Logar province, one of the victim’s family said. Hazrad Din, a 50-year-old drum player, had played drums at celebrations in the province’s Baraki Barak district for the last 30 years.      Full news...

AFP: Three Western women aid workers and their Afghan driver were shot dead Wednesday by gunmen who fired numerous times into their vehicle near the capital Kabul, Afghan police and their organisation said. The killings, claimed by the insurgent Taliban, are the deadliest in years involving international aid workers.      Full news...

Quqnoos: The deputy head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Dr Abdullah, told parliament on Tuesday that a "number of delegates" in Parliament "supported drug traffickers and terrorists", our political correspondent said.      Full news...

AFP: A suspected militant bomb struck a minibus carrying a newly married couple in Afghanistan killing the bride and groom and 11 wedding guests, police said on Saturday.      Full news...

EurasiaNet: An umbrella group representing some 100 aid groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has said that violence is at its worst level since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 and that it is concerned over the increasing number of civilian casualties and attacks on aid workers in recent months.      Full news...

Telegraph.co.uk: Thomas Schweich, who served as the State Department's most senior anti-drugs in official in Afghanistan until last month, said that Mr Karzai's overriding concern was to hold power. This had led him to protect 20 government officials, all linked to drug trafficking.      Full news...

Democracy Now: Coming on the heels of Barack Obama’s highly publicized visit to Afghanistan—what he calls a central front in the so-called war on terror—we play an address by Pacifica radio host Sonali Kolhatkar, one of this country’s leading voices against the occupation of Afghanistan and co-author of the book Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence.      Full news...

The Hindu: Each year since the parliamentary elections of 2005, Afghanistan has seen a spiralling toll of human lives. Initially, the resurgent Taliban burst out once again in the southern provinces, where they had their stronghold, engaging the international forces in conventional warfare. The escalated fighting was explained away by the military forces who said they were going into “new” areas, an admission that the initial operations against the Taliban in 2001 had a very limited mandate.      Full news...

Press TV: Tribal elders in Afghanistan's western Herat province have said dozens of civilians have been killed during aerial attacks by US forces. News of the fighting in Herat province came from tribal elders who reported dozens of casualties in the Zirko Valley in Shindan district.      Full news...

World News Australia: A spokesman for Ghazni's governor, said the women, dressed in blue burqas, were shot and killed on Saturday just outside Ghazni city in central Afghanistan. He called the two "innocent local people." Taliban fighters told AP Television News the two were executed for allegedly running a prostitution ring catering to US soldiers and other foreign contractors at a US base in Ghazni city.      Full news...

PAN: Officials in Nuristan province on Monday said almost 30 defenseless civilians have been reportedly killed during NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) airstrike in Want-Waigal district of the eastern province.      Full news...

Women's eNews: Drug addiction is mounting in Afghanistan as wives get hooked on the smoke their husbands exhale. A women-only treatment clinic opened last year in Kabul, where the clinic's director estimates about one-third of the women in the city are addicted. Addiction in Afghanistan has doubled over the last few years, according to United Nations figures, and drug money is helping fund the Taliban, which controls many of the smuggling routes.      Full news...

US & News: The war in Afghanistan reached a wrenching milestone this summer: For the second month in a row, U.S. and coalition troop deaths in the country surpassed casualties in Iraq. This is driven in large part, U.S. officials point out, by simple cause and effect. Marines flowed into southern Afghanistan earlier this year to rout firmly entrenched Taliban fighters, prompting a spike in combat in territory where NATO forces previously didn't have the manpower to send troops. "We're doing something we haven't done in seven years, which is go after the Taliban where they're living," says a U.S. official.      Full news...

BBC: At least 250 Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded in insurgent attacks or military action in the past six days, the Red Cross says. It has called on all parties to the conflict to avoid civilian casualties.      Full news...

DPA: A powerful explosion killed at least 44 people and wounded scores of others in an apparent suicide attack at the Indian embassy in Kabul Monday, officials said. Sources in the Afghan interior ministry said at least 44 people were killed in the deadliest suicide bombing since fall of Taliban regime in 2001.      Full news...

ABC News: The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says children in Afghanistan suffer more than in any other country in the world from violence, war and poverty. It says Afghan children are not only caught up in fighting between Taliban rebels and international forces, but there is also evidence of an increasing number ending up on the frontlines.      Full news...