3 American troops killed in southern Afghanistan

By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Clashes with insurgents killed three American troops in southern Afghanistan, where roadside bombs also killed nine civilians, officials said Tuesday.

A Polish soldier, 22 Taliban insurgents and two Afghan soldiers also died in violence nine days ahead of the country's second-ever presidential election. A record number of U.S. and NATO troops are working to protect the country ahead of the Aug. 20 vote, which Taliban militants have vowed to disrupt.

NATO said the Americans died in separate "hostile fire incidents." It did not disclose the exact location of the attacks. The first died of wounds suffered in an incident that occurred Saturday, another died Sunday and the third died Monday, a NATO statement said

At least 27 foreign troops, including 18 Americans, have died in August, a record pace, according to an Associated Press count. July, when 75 troops died, was the deadliest month in Afghanistan for U.S. and NATO forces since the 2001 U.S. invasion. Forty-four Americans died last month.

Militants have greatly increased their use of roadside bombs, which have killed dozens of troops this year. Two such bombs struck two civilian vehicles in southern Afghanistan early Tuesday, killing nine people and wounding five others in two districts of Kandahar.

In Zhari district, nine people, including two women, were killed when the bomb ripped through their vehicle, said Daud Farhad, a doctor at Kandahar's Mirwais hospital. Five civilians were wounded when their vehicle hit a bomb in Dand district, said Naziq Khan, a local official.

A recent U.N. report said insurgent suicide attacks and roadside bombings claimed more civilian lives "than any other tactic used by the parties to the conflict" and were launched "in violation of the relevant principles of international law." At least 1,013 civilians were killed in the first six months of this year compared with 818 for the same period in 2008 — an increase of 24 percent.

On Monday, meanwhile, Polish Capt. Daniel Ambrozinski, 32, disappeared after his foot patrol of about 50 Afghan and Polish troops came under fire, Poland's Defense Ministry said. His body was found early Tuesday in Ajristan, in the eastern province of Ghazni.

Four other Polish troops were wounded. Ambrozinski was the 10th Polish soldier killed in Afghanistan since March 2002.

Afghan officials said clashes and airstrikes in the south of the country had killed nearly two dozen Taliban fighters. Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, where thousands of additional U.S. troops have joined the fight to try to reverse militants' recent gains.

Twelve insurgents died in airstrikes and clashes with Afghan and Western forces in an area on the border of Ghazni and Zabul provinces, said Wazir Khan, a local official. The militants were killed late Monday inside a compound, Khan said.

Also in Zabul, a roadside bomb killed two Afghan soldiers and wounded three others, said Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai, the army commander for southern Afghanistan.

Ten Taliban were killed in Uruzgan on Monday night in a fight with Afghan and foreign troops, none of whom were killed, Zazai said.

Chavez warns of 'war' over Colombia-US deal

QUITO (AFP) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned Monday that "winds of war" were blowing across Latin America because of Colombia's decision to allow the United States use of seven military bases.

Speaking in Quito at a regional summit, Chavez said he was fulfilling his "moral duty" by telling fellow leaders that the "winds of war were beginning to blow," because of the July accord between Bogota and Washington.

"This could generate a war in South America," he told the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) summit in the Ecuadoran capital.

The heightened rhetoric came a day after Chavez accused Colombia's leader Alvaro Uribe and the Colombian military of "provocations" by entering Venezuelan territory. Colombia's foreign ministry denied the charge.

Moderate Latin American countries, led by Brazil and Argentina, agreed in Quito to hold a summit, probably in Argentina later this month, to discuss the deal that has angered many in the region.

They said Uribe, America's main ally in the region, would be invited to explain his case. The Colombian leader was not present at the UNASUR gathering because of ongoing tensions with Ecuador's President Rafael Correa.

Colombia raised concern throughout the region, which has a troubled history of US military interventions, when it announced a deal on July 15 to allow American forces to coordinate anti-drug operations from seven of its military bases.

The deal has prompted strong criticism from Colombia's regional opponents, particularly Correa and Chavez.

It has also sparked concern from moderate Colombian allies, such as Chile and Brazil, who want assurance that US forces will not be operating outside Colombia's territory.

The summit, initially proposed at the level of foreign and defense ministers, was upgraded to a meeting of heads of state at the insistence of the outspoken Venezuelan leader.

Chavez has led a diplomatic offensive against the Colombia-US agreement in recent weeks, saying he feared the move amounted to preparations for an invasion of his country by a "Yankee military force."

Colombia and the United States have insisted the bases are meant only to expand the US fight against drug trafficking in Colombia.

"The Yankees are starting to command the Colombian armed forces; they are the ones who are in charge, who are in charge of these provocations, who make up huge lies," Chavez has charged.

On Sunday he stepped up his accusation against Uribe, accusing the Colombian military of having entered Venezuelan territory, although he didn't specify when.

"We are not talking about a patrol with a few soldiers that strayed over a border" into Venezuela, Chavez said during his television show "Hello President."

"These troops crossed the Orinoco River in a boat and carried out an incursion into Venezuelan territory. When our troops got there, the Colombians had already gone away," he said.

In Bogota, the Colombian Foreign Ministry said the military had checked with the units in charge of guarding the border along the river in the provinces of Vichada and Guainia and that the Venezuelan accusations "are not true."

The new charges follow last month's decision by Chavez to freeze relations with Colombia in response to accusations leveled by Bogota that Venezuela was supplying weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftist guerrilla group.

Ecuador, an ally of Venezuela's, is also wary of the bases announcement. It cut off relations with Bogota after Colombia's military staged a cross-border raid into its territory in March last year to destroy a rebel camp.

Both Venezuela and Ecuador nearly went to war with Colombia over the incursion, although Raul Reyes, one of the most senior FARC leaders, was killed in the attack.

Colombian soldiers that entered the camp also recovered computer hard drives and flash drives with data they say links Chavez to both the leftist guerrillas and the illegal drug trade.

Kuwait nabs al-Qaida group planning US base attack

By DIANA ELIAS, Associated Press Writer

KUWAIT CITY – Kuwaiti authorities announced Tuesday they have arrested an al-Qaida-linked group that was planning to attack a key U.S. military base in the small oil-rich state.

The Interior Ministry said in a brief statement that State Security detained a "terrorist network" of six Kuwaitis who gave "detailed confessions" about plans to bomb Camp Arifjan, the main U.S. base in the country, as well as the headquarters of the country's security agency, in addition to other facilities it did not name.

The statement did not provide any details. However, Kuwait's Alrai daily quoted anonymous security sources on Tuesday saying that the group had confessed to buying a truck which it intended to load with fertilizer, chemicals and gas cylinders and ram it into the camp.

It was unlikely the attack on the vast American logistics and supply facility in the desert south of the Kuwaiti capital would have been successful due to high security. The U.S. military in Kuwait declined to immediately comment the foiled plot.

There was no indication when the six suspects planned to attack Camp Arifjan, located about 38 miles (60 kilometers) from the capital, Kuwait City.

The base was key to the 2003 U.S. invasion of neighboring Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. U.S. troops used Kuwait as a launch pad for the operation, which was opposed by most Arabs.

Camp Arifjan will likely be an essential hub for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. A Baghdad-Washington agreement calls for U.S. combat troops to withdraw by August 2010, leaving behind a residual force of 35,000-50,000 troops to train and advise the Iraqi security forces until a final pullout by the end of 2011.

Kuwait has been a close U.S. ally since the Washington-led 1991 Gulf War that liberated it from a seven-month Iraqi occupation under Saddam.

But militants in the country oppose the U.S. military presence and have attacked American troops and civilians working for them in the past.

In October 2002, two Kuwaiti extremists opened fire on U.S. Marines training on Kuwait's Failaka island, killing one and injuring another. In January 2003, a fundamentalist civil servant killed an American contractor and severely wounded another when he ambushed their car near another U.S. army camp in Kuwait.

Six Kuwaitis and stateless Arabs are serving life sentences after being convicted in 2007 of planning attacks on U.S. troops and Kuwaiti security personnel. They were part of a group arrested after unprecedented street clashes with militants in 2005.

Facebook buys social media aggregator FriendFeed

By RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO -

Facebook is buying a Web service called FriendFeed that gives users a view of what their friends are doing on all sorts of social media sites, including Facebook's rivals.

In an interview, FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor said the two services will eventually merge, though FriendFeed will operate separately for now. He said FriendFeed was drawn to Facebook's much larger base of 250 million users.

"Facebook has a really unique opportunity for our team to reach a significant percentage of the world, and that was an opportunity I think everyone on our team was extremely excited about," he said.

Facebook said all 12 employees of Mountain View, Calif.-based FriendFeed will work for Facebook, whose headquarters is nearby in Palo Alto. FriendFeed's four founders — Taylor, Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh — will take on senior positions on the engineering and product teams at Facebook.

It's unclear what exactly Facebook plans to do with FriendFeed, which centers around the idea of instantaneously aggregating information from online destinations like short-messaging site Twitter, review site Yelp and photo-sharing site Flickr.

Gartner Inc. analyst Ray Valdes said the FriendFeed acquisition should help Facebook open up its site and boost features that show users more information in real time.

"They needed to do something to meet the Twitter challenge," he said, referring to the messaging site that has shown the type of buzz Facebook once enjoyed.

Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of products, said the companies had been talking about a combination for some time, as they're both working on solving the same problems: how to help people connect with one another over time, how to make these connections work on various devices and how to filter information through friends.

"I think both companies start with the premise that the most valuable information in the world is the one that comes from the people you care about," he said. "Building technologies that leverage those relationships everywhere you go is where we're both starting from."

Cox would not say if Facebook plans to incorporate FriendFeed's real-time search capability into its site. He said Facebook has already been testing real-time search and that FriendFeed has done a great job with its own search.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Police: 400 unaccounted for in Taiwan mudslide

By PETER ENAV, Associated Press Writer

TAIPEI, Taiwan – A mudslide touched off by a deadly typhoon buried a remote mountain village in Taiwan, leaving at least 400 people unaccounted for, while a massive landslide in China toppled seven apartment buildings, an official said Tuesday.

Typhoon Morakot slammed Taiwan over the weekend with as much as 80 inches (2 meters) of rain before crossing the 112-mile (180-kilometer)-wide Taiwan Strait and hitting China.

The storm inflicted the worst flooding the island has seen in at least a half-century, submerging large swaths of farmland in chocolate-brown muck and swamping city streets.

Taiwanese authorities put the confirmed death toll in Taiwan at 38, but that seemed certain to rise. The country's Cabinet set aside NT$20 billion ($600 million) in emergency funds to help with relief work and to compensate victims' families.

A disaster appeared to be unfolding at the isolated southern village of Shiao Lin, hit by a mudslide Sunday at about 6 a.m. local time — while many people were still asleep — and now cut off by land from the outside world.

Speaking to The Associated Press, a Taiwanese police official who identified himself only by his surname, Wang, said 400 people were unaccounted for in the village. Wang said 100 people had been rescued or otherwise avoided the brunt of the disaster.

One of the rescued villagers, an unidentified middle-aged man, told police that his family of 10 was wiped out.

"They're gone," he said, according to a local photographer who overheard the exchange. "All gone."

Another rescued villager, Lin Chien-chung, told the United Evening News he believes as many as 600 people were buried in the mudslide.

"The mudslide covered a large part of the village including a primary school and many homes," Lin was quoted as saying. "A part of the mountain above us just fell on the village."

Lin said he and several neighbors moved to higher ground several hours before the mudslide hit because torrential rains had flooded their homes.

Taiwan's population register lists Shiao Lin as having 1,300 inhabitants, though many are believed to live elsewhere.

Under leaden gray skies, military helicopters hovered over the community, dropping food and looking for survivors. They were unable to land because of the slippery terrain.

Shiao Lin was cut off after floodwaters destroyed a bridge about 8 miles (12 kilometers) away. A back road wending its way northward toward the mountain community of Alishan was also believed to be cut off, and with rain still falling in the area, the prospects for an early resumption of overland travel were poor.

Elsewhere in Taiwan, an additional 62 people were listed as missing.

The typhoon's path took it almost directly over the capital of Taipei, but its most destructive effects were in the heavily agricultural south and along the island's densely foliated mountain spine. Shiao Lin is on Taiwan's southwestern coast.

In rural Pingtung county, the rains turned rich swaths of farmland so sodden that it was difficult to distinguish them from the open sea. In the Pingtung community of Sandimen, troops maneuvered armored personnel carriers through flooded streets, plucking whole families from water-logged buildings and ferrying them to safety.

In Taitung, in the southeastern lowlands, a raging flood toppled a five-story hotel.

Anxious relatives in Taitung county begged President Ma Ying-jeou to help their loved ones.

"You must try to save my father," cried one. "Please, I beg you to save my father."

After pummeling Taiwan, Morakot slammed Sunday into China's Fujian province, directly across the strait, with heavy rain and winds of 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour, according the China Meteorological Administration. Authorities evacuated 1.4 million people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The heavy rains triggered a massive landslide in Pengxi, a town in Wenzhou city of eastern China's Zhejiang province, destroying seven three-story apartment buildings at the foot of a mountain late Monday, an official surnamed Chen from the Pengxi government told AP.

Xinhua reported an unknown number of residents were buried in the landslide but Chen said there were only six people there at the time and they were all pulled out alive, although two later died when emergency treatment failed. The rest were injured, one seriously, he said.

Chen said half of the buildings were left vacant after residents moved elsewhere for work.

Hundreds of villages and towns were flooded and more than 6,000 houses collapsed. Four people died in Zhejiang, and two other deaths were reported in Fujian and Jiangxi province, Xinhua said.

Before plowing into Taiwan, the storm hit the Philippines, where it killed 22.