Reuters: Afghanistan may not reap the full benefit from the biggest foreign investment in its history, a copper mine to be built by a Chinese company, if full safeguards are not set in place, an independent watchdog said on Wednesday.      Full news...

IWPR: Residents of a southern village tell of a night of violence at the hands of foreign and Afghan soldiers. Abdul Manaan claims he suffered slashes to his neck during a nighttime raid which locals say was carried out by a mixed force of foreign and Afghan troops helicoptered into Toube on November 18. Eyewitnesses say the soldiers killed 18 civilians in an attack that was brutal even by the standards of the Afghan conflict.      Full news...

AFP: Corruption in Afghanistan, which reaches up to deputy-minister level in an administration permeated by mafia-like structures, poses a danger to the nation's efforts at stability and security, a watchdog said.      Full news...

IWPR: Journalist Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi says his brother Parwez has been jailed and threatened with death because of his own reporting on human rights violations in the north.      Full news...

Daily Mail: Shown together for the first time, this is Osama Bin Laden and the son who rejected his terror creed and went on to marry an English parish councillor. Omar Bin Laden, now 26, was just 15 when he was pictured with the father he describes as gentle and kind, with a love of football and a great sense of humour.      Full news...

IWPR: Private security companies are contributing to the rising tide of lawlessness, according to both Afghan and international experts. Former commanders, ex-special forces, demobilised militias – at times it seems like the streets of Kabul are crammed full of strongmen looking to capitalise on their most marketable skill – the ability and readiness to fight.      Full news...

Pajhwak Afghan News: Residents of Wazikhwa district of the Pakthika province live in constant fear of being struck by Taliban insurgents. "Visiting this area is not without risk," says Khair Mohammad, an elderly person, standing by a deserted shop.      Full news...

The Times: A suicide bomber packed a car with explosives and blew it up next to a minibus transporting Afghan soldiers early today, killing at least 16 people, including several children.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Around 60 children have died of pneumonia in the Kiran-wa-Manjan district of the northeastern Badakhshan, residents claimed on Monday. But the Public Health Ministry officials rejected their claim as exaggerated.      Full news...

BBC News: Digging into what the latest opinion poll really means, security still came out as the main concern, but of those polled who said things were moving in the wrong direction, the economy was at the top of their list.      Full news...

IRIN News: Abdul Samad was 17 when he lost his legs in a landmine explosion in Helmand Province in 1998. He wanted to commit suicide when he first realised his disability, but his family kept him alive. Nine years later, although he has five children, he thinks his problems have only mounted. "My children are also deprived of a happy life because of my disability," he said.      Full news...

By Marc W. Herold: Thought and language, which reflect reality in a way different from that of perception, are the key to the nature of human consciousness. Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of human consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness...      Full news...

OneWorld: US war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they're planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq.      Full news...

PoliticalAffairs.net: A spate of recent news reports indicates that the NATO occupation of Afghanistan is becoming a deeper disaster. It has been revealed that many victims of the Nov. 6 bombing in northern Baghlan province were children shot by government bodyguards. About 77 people died (including four members of the Afghan parliament), and another 100 were injured. According to an internal United Nations security report obtained on Nov. 19, bodyguards for the politicians shot at least 100 rounds of gunfire "deliberately and indiscriminately" into the crowd after the suicide bombing, and that schoolchildren bore "the brunt of the onslaught at close range."      Full news...

AFP: International war planes going after insurgents in northeastern Afghanistan struck a road construction camp and killed 14 workers, leaving many unrecognisable, officials said Wednesday.      Full news...

IRIN News: Razmi Khan, 12, was once the most outstanding student in his class, but is unable to go to school. He was badly wounded by a missile as he walked to a mosque in Nader Shah Kot District in the southeastern province of Khost on 17 November. He was taken to a local hospital where surgeons amputated his left leg to save his life.      Full news...

The Times: "The British public would be up in arms if they knew that the district appointments in the south for which British soldiers are dying are there just to protect drug routes," said one analyst. Western and Afghan officials are also alarmed at how narco-kleptocracy has extended its grip around President Karzai, a figure regarded by some as increasingly isolated by a cadre of corrupt officials.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Some 200 former Mujahideen commanders from the northeastern four provinces, in a meeting in Takhar province Thursday warned the government of dire consequences if they were not awarded their due place and rights.      Full news...

IWPR: Helmand's farmers are chopping down their pomegranate trees for the more lucrative opium plants, while blaming the government for failing to help them. The beautiful red flowers of the pomegranate tree used to cover Helmand, a province which was famous for the luscious red fruit. But these days a different sort of flower blooms, as more and more of Helmand's sandy soil is given over to the opium poppy.      Full news...

AFP: UN rights chief Louise Arbour criticised Afghanistan Tuesday for stalling on a plan to address atrocities and human rights abuses committed in its more than two decades of armed conflict.      Full news...

Reuters: Too much aid to Afghanistan is wasted -- soaked up in contractors' profits, spent on expensive expatriate consultants or squandered on small-scale, quick-fix projects, a leading British charity said on Tuesday. Despite more than $15 billion of aid pumped into Afghanistan since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, many Afghans still suffer levels of poverty rarely seen outside sub-Saharan Africa.      Full news...

The Ottawa Citizen: The Defence Department is keeping secret the names of dozens of companies that received almost $42 million worth of contracts in Afghanistan. However, an analysis by CanWest News Service suggests that more than $1.1 million in business has been awarded to an Afghan company that bears the same name as one of Kandahar's most infamous warlords.      Full news...

Reuters: They are known as "bacha bereesh," boys without beards, teenage boys who dress up as girls and dance for male patrons at parties in northern Afghanistan. It's an age old practice that has led to some of the boy dancers being turned into sex slaves by wealthy and powerful patrons, often former warlords, who dress the boys up as girls, shower them with gifts and keep them as "mistresses."      Full news...

AFP: Afghanistan is fifth last on a global index of human development, according to a report released Sunday, despite billions of dollars in aid and help since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.      Full news...

The Associated Press: As many as two-thirds of the 77 people killed and 100 wounded in a suicide bombing Nov. 6 were hit by bullets from visiting lawmakers' panicked bodyguards, who fired into a crowd for as long as five minutes, a preliminary U.N. report says.      Full news...

VOA News: Afghan security officials say Taliban militants have hanged five policeman in southern Afghanistan as a public warning to others.      Full news...

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): In its final Afghan Opium Survey for 2007 issued today, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that opium is now equivalent to more than half (53%) of the country's licit GDP. Speaking at a conference in Brussels on the future of Afghanistan, hosted by Princeton University, the Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, announced that the total export value of opiates produced in and trafficked from Afghanistan in 2007 is about $4 billion, a 29 per cent increase over 2006.      Full news...

The Herald Sun: THE US military is experiencing a "suicide epidemic" with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS. At least 6256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 - an average of 17 a day - the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has criticized members of his cabinet and deputies in parliament for corruption -- saying the problem is so widespread that it is setting back the reconstruction of the country. Karzai says the living conditions of ordinary Afghans are deteriorating every day while government officials think only about how to increase their personal wealth.      Full news...

BBC Persian (translated by RAWA): Members of Afghanistan parliament accuse some officials of Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul for raping women prisoners. A delegation of Afghan parliamentarians who recently visited the prison say some women become pregnant after being raped.      Full news...