Snapping up cheap spy tools, nation’s ‘monitoring everyone’
By FRANK BAJAK and JACK GILLUM It was a national scandal. Peru’s then-vice president accused two domestic intelligence agents of staking her out. Then, a top congressman blamed the spy…
Central Asia
Turkish official: Attackers were from Russia, Central Asia
By DOMINIQUE SOGUEL and SUZAN FRASER As the death toll from the Istanbul airport attack rose Thursday to 44, a senior Turkish official said the three suicide bombers who carried…
Tajikistan vote on allowing president to rule for life
By PETER LEONARD Tajikistan held a referendum Sunday on changing the Constitution to allow its authoritarian president to run for office indefinitely, effectively allowing him to rule for life. The…
British troops deploy to Afghan province amid Taliban battle
By LYNNE O’DONNELL When Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani took office, he ushered in a period of hope for the country’s traumatized and war-weary people that decades of violence would soon…
Russians support airstrikes in Syria, despite Afghan legacy
By KATHERINE JACOBSEN A vast workshop that upgrades warplanes of the kind Russia is using in Syria is this town’s lifeblood, and support for the Syria campaign is strong. “We’ve…
Afghan defense minister says Taliban hid in bombed hospital
By LYNNE O’DONNELL Afghanistan’s acting defense minister said Monday that the Doctors Without Borders hospital bombed by U.S. forces in the northern city of Kunduz was being used by insurgents…
Putin: Russian strikes in Syria killed hundreds of militants
By NATALIYA VASILYEVA and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Russian airstrikes in Syria have killed hundreds of militants, President Vladimir Putin said Friday as he called for a shared military effort of ex-Soviet…
Top general in Afghanistan: US strike on hospital a mistake
The deadly American attack on a hospital in northern Afghanistan occurred despite “rigorous” U.S. military procedures designed to avoid such mistakes, the top commander of U.S. and allied forces in…