Al-Qaeda

According to BBC news, Somalia's al-Shabab Islamists have denied lifting their ban on Western aid agencies and say UN reports of famine are "sheer propaganda".The UN on Wednesday said that parts of Somalia were suffering a famine after the worst drought in 60 years, and millions of people are desperately trying to survive.

Beware, Superman, Batman or even Spiderman, Al Qaeda sympathisers are planning to produce a children's cartoon film to inspire young Muslim viewers to take up armed violence against the West, so Superjihadist might soon appear on the screens, security specialists who monitor militant websites say.

The Somali president issued an urgent appeal for international aid as his drought-stricken country faces a famine that has left half of the population in dire need."The situation is very severe. The conditions are very harsh," President Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed told CNN Wednesday during an exclusive interview at his residence in Mogadishu.

The Libyan conflict is now being treated as a civil war, but while the Transitional National Council (TNC) is now recognised as the legitimate representative of the people of Libya by various international states including the U.K., France and most recently, the U.S., not much is known about who the Libyan people really support.

Although the Islamist group banned television during its time in power between 1996 and 2001, since being ousted of power by the U.S. after being accused of harbouring al Qaeda militants blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Islamist group has increasingly become aware of the necessity to use new technology and its communication tools now includes websites, mobile phone text messages, emails and posts on Twitter and Facebook.

The United Nations declared today that famine exists in two regions of southern Somalia: southern Bakool, and Lower Shabelle," a statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Somalia said.

The Taliban on Wednesday said Mullah Omar was alive, accusing the Americans of hacking their phones after a text message sent to media from a spokesman's phone said the leader was dead.

Chinese Police Gun Down at Least Four Rioters in Xinjiang Province

The UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, says aid is being provided to camps controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab.

Afghan government officials on Thursday accused NATO of killing six civilians, including an 11-year-old girl, during a military operation targeting the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network.

A suicide bomber has killed three people at a Kandahar mosque during a memorial service for Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's brother who was assassinated last week.

Five French soldiers and an Afghan civilian were killed on Wednesday in a suicide bomb attack, President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said, one day after he returned from a visit to Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda Using ‘Facebook and Twitter’ to Plan Terrorist Attacks.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has led mourners at the funeral of Ahmed Wali Karzai, his influential younger half-brother, who was assassinated on Tuesday afternoon in Kandahar by a member of his own security team.

Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar, the country's defence minister, said without it Pakistan could not afford to keep troops at 1,100 checkpoints near the mountainous border.

On Monday, The Guardian newspaper said that the CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader's family.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says he regrets the U.S. decision to stop $800 million in military aid to Pakistan.

Pakistan's increasingly "close and effective defence ties" with China will allow Islamabad to "fill the gap" arising from the prospect of reduced military aid from the United States, a Pakistani official has said.

Pakistan appear to be sliding into a mix of political and ethnic violence a little bit more every day and as violent protests have gripped the country's largest city for the fourth straight day, on Friday police and paramilitary troops were given orders to shoot suspected assailants on sight.

The US has warned airlines of a potential threat from militants surgically implanting explosives.The Department of Homeland Security recently issued a memo to security officials and foreign counterparts alerting them to the threat of "body packing".

Al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate claimed responsibility for two separate attacks in Iraq which killed at least 30 people in June, a group that monitors insurgent communications said.

Mr Brian Johnson-Thomas, a former arms trafficking expert for the UN Security Council incriminatory comments were made on the TV channel Russia Today and came after the Libyan army said it had intercepted 100 Belgian-made FN assault rifles, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition of the same calibre used in the guns, allegedly coming from Qatar.

Pakistan has expelled a team of at least 18 military advisers and trainers sent to help with the fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, as the fallout from the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden continues to rock relations between Islamabad and its western allies.

As the U.S. looks ahead to its phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, even more attention is being directed toward Pakistan, where Obama administration officials say al-Qaeda and its allies are still plotting attacks against the West.

A spokesman says the opposition insists that the strongman cannot be involved in any future government, but it may allow him to live out his last years in Libya at an isolated location.

President Obama has ordered 33,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in the next 14 months with 10,000 to be withdrawn by the end of this year. The timetable settled on by the president after a vigorous internal review was faster than sought by some top military commanders but much slower than demanded by many domestic political critics.

Dozens of militants, many of them suspected al Qaeda members, have today escaped a Yemeni prison located in the south-eastern province of Hadramout, by using a tunnel they dug over the past months in what appeared to be a brazen, coordinated jailbreak, according to reports.

Four months into the conflict and while the battle for Libya is still going strong, various conspiracy theories have by now emerged. After Gaddafi's own theory of Al-Qaeda putting drugs in the people's Nescafe flopped, the idea that Libya could in fact be the theatre for a new cold war attracted quite a lot of attention.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said publicly for the first time on Saturday that the United States and the Nato-led coalition have been actively negotiating with the Taliban, an assertion that was yesterday confirmed by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

A man was taken into custody early Friday in connection with an investigation into a suspicious vehicle near the Pentagon, U.S authorities confirmed.