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The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for two separate bomb attacks in Afghanistan that killed eight Americans, five Canadians and an Afghan in a surge of violence in the war-battered country. A U.S. congressional official said CIA employees were believed to be among the victims of a suicide blast at an American base in the volatile east.

The explosion at the Forward Operating Base Chapman base in Khost province on Wednesday killed eight American civilians and one Afghan, the worst loss of life for the U.S. in the country since October.

Separately, four Canadian soldiers and a journalist imbedded in their unit were killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb in the southern Kandahar province, the bloodiest single incident suffered by that country’s military in 2009.

Michelle Lang, a 34-year-old health reporter with the Calgary Herald, was the first Canadian journalist to die in Afghanistan. She arrived in the country just two weeks ago.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks in messages to The Associated Press.

Also Thursday, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand province in the south said an airstrike by international forces killed and wounded civilians. Dawud Ahmadi said he did not have immediate information on how many were killed in the Wednesday incident in Babajid district, which he said occurred after an international forces patrol came under fire.

NATO said it was aware of the reports and was investigating. Claims of civilians killed by foreign forces are a highly emotional issue among Afghans and feed strong resentment of international soldiers.

It was not immediately clear how the suicide bomber at the American base at the edge of Khost city was able to circumvent security.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that an Afghan National Army officer wearing a suicide vest entered the Khost base Wednesday and blew himself up inside the gym. A U.S. official who was briefed on the blast also said it took place in the gym.

Khost is the capital of Khost province, which borders Pakistan and is a Taliban stronghold.

The U.S. official said eight American civilians and one Afghan were killed; it was not clear if the Afghan victim was military or civilian. Six Americans were wounded, the official said. The CIA has not yet commented on or confirmed the deaths.

There was no independent confirmation that the bomber was a member of the Afghan military. Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said no Afghan National Army soldiers are at the base.

But an Afghan official in Khost said about 200 Afghans have been contracted by the U.S. to take care of security at the base. They are usually deployed on the outer ring of its walls, although some work inside, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“It’s not the first time that Afghan forces have conducted such an attack to kill Americans or foreigners,” the Taliban statement said, citing the killing of an American soldier and the wounding of two Italians this week in Badghis province. NATO has provided no details of that incident, but Afghan Gen. Jalander Shah Bahnam said an Afghan soldier opened fire on a base in the province’s Bala Murghab district.

The congressional official in Washington said it was not clear how many of the victims in Khost were assigned to the CIA.

A former senior CIA officer who was stationed at the base said a combination of agency officers and contractors operated out of the remote outpost with the military and other agencies.

All the U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

NATO said only that the base is used by provincial reconstruction teams, which consist of both soldiers and civilians, and other personnel.

A spokesman in Kabul for the international coalition force said no U.S. or NATO troops were killed in the explosion. The attack was the bloodiest for Americans since eight soldiers were killed in an insurgent attack on a base in eastern Afghanistan on Oct. 3.

In the south, NATO said the four Canadian troops and the reporter died when their armored vehicle hit a bomb while on an afternoon patrol south of Kandahar city. It was the third-deadliest day for Canadians in Afghanistan since the war began. Hard money training.

Working in a war zone obviously presents unexpected challenges and dangers far beyond the usual ones at industrial worksites.  But this is the story of why some Army National Guardsmen are suing defense contractor KBR because of alleged exposures to a toxic chemical at one such industrial worksite in Iraq.
When specialist Larry Roberta of the Oregon Army National Guard went to Iraq in 2003, he expected sandstorms, physical hardship, perhaps even combat.  What he didn’t expect was the orange dust he encountered, all over the place, at the Qarmat Ali Water Treatment Plant, near Basra in southern Iraq.

“You could taste stuff in the air,” Roberta recalled. “It had a really strange metallic taste.”

Roberta’s unit and other Army National Guard units were at the plant during the spring and summer of 2003, in the months after the U.S. invasion that March.  Their mission was to provide security for workers repairing the plant.  It supplied water to Iraqi oil fields, and was an important part of the U.S. mission to get Iraq’s oil flowing again. The workers were repairing the plant for defense contractor Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR).

Roberta and other Guardsmen and former KBR employees told NBC News that the orange dust was throughout the plant and the grounds, and sometimes would permeate the air during when the desert winds blew.

“It blew up in my face and on my chicken patty and my mouth and stuff like that,” Roberta said.  “I didn’t really think a whole lot of it other than it tasted really bad and made me throw up and burned.”

Capt. Russell Kimberling of the Indiana Army National Guard told us he asked KBR officials what the dust was.

“What we got from them was,’It’s a mild irritant,’” Kimberling said.

But the dust actually was a highly toxic chemical called sodium dichromate,  which scientists have found can cause lung cancer in humans.

It had been used by Iraqi workers prior to the war to prevent corrosion in the pipes at the plant.  There were hundreds of bags at the chemical at the plant, some of them clearly labeled.

The mission’s official military name was Task Force RIO (”Restoration of Iraqi Oil”).  KBR got the contract.

Six years later, some of the Guardsmen assigned to provide security for Task Force RIO at the plant are dead, dying or suffering from serious health problems–including rashes, perforated septums and lung disease. One of the foremost experts in sodium dichromate, Dr. Herman  Gibb, says the Guardsmen’s symptoms are consistent with “significant exposure” to the chemical.

KBR argues that the company is not to blame. The company says it told the Army about the dangerous chemical as soon as it was identified at the plant.  That, the company says, was on July 25, 2003.

But, international KBR documents contradict that claim, and indicate that the company became aware of the chemical at the site two months earlier. Hard money training.

The Netherlands will immediately begin using full body scanners for flights heading to the United States to prevent future terrorist attacks like the Christmas Day attempt by a young Nigerian.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, managed to board a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport carrying explosives but failed to successfully detonate them.

In a preliminary report, the Dutch government on Wednesday said the plan to blow up the Detroit-bound aircraft was professional but called its execution “amateurish.”

Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst said Abdulmutallab apparently assembled the explosive device, including 80 grams of PETN, in the aircraft toilet, then planned to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals.

“It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster,” Ter Horst told a news conference.

Abdulmutallab arrived in Amsterdam on Friday from Lagos, Nigeria. After a layover of less than three hours, he passed through a security check at the gate in Amsterdam, including a hand baggage scan and a metal detector.

“No suspicious matters which would give reason to classify the person involved as a high-risk passenger were identified during the security check,” Ter Horst said.

The Dutch government says it will immediately begin using full body scanners on flights to the United States to prevent future terrorist attacks like the Christmas Day attempt by a young Nigerian.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, managed to board a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport carrying explosives but failed to successfully detonate them.

In a preliminary report, the Dutch government says his plan to blow up the Detroit-bound aircraft was professional but its execution was “amateurish.”

An earlier Dutch investigation said all security checks were correctly carried out in Amsterdam and American authorities had cleared the passenger list. Hard money training.

The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American airliner apparently turned to the Internet for counseling and companionship, writing in an online forum that he was “lonely” and had “never found a true Muslim friend.”

“I have no one to speak too [sic],” read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. “No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems.”

The Washington Post reviewed 300 online postings under the name “farouk1986″ (a combination of Abdulmutallab’s middle name and birth year). The postings mused openly about love and marriage, his college ambitions and angst over standardized testing, as well as his inner struggle as a devout Muslim between liberalism and extremism. In often-intimate writings, posted between 2005 and 2007, he sought friends online, through Facebook and in Islamic chat rooms: “My name is Umar but you can call me Farouk.” He often invited readers to “have your say” and once wrote, “May Allah reward you for reading and reward you more for helping.”

A U.S. government official said late Monday that federal intelligence officials were reviewing the online postings but had not independently confirmed their authenticity.

Many of the biographical details in the writings, however, match up with facts already known about Abdulmutallab.

Farouk1986 wrote of being born in 1986 and having attended an elite British boarding school in Togo, where many of his classmates were British expatriates and students from around West Africa.

The postings also reference visits to London, the United States and other countries, including Egypt and Yemen. Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday that Abdulmutallab traveled to the United States in July 2004 to Washington and in August 2008 to Houston.

Farouk1986 wrote about considering applications to U.S. and British universities, including University College London, where officials said Abdulmutallab enrolled in a mechanical engineering course from September 2005 to June 2008. He also wrote about his family’s wealth; Abdulmutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a frequent visitor to the United States, retired this year as chairman of First Bank of Nigeria and still sits on the boards of several prominent Nigerian firms. Hard money training.

A suicide bombing targeting a Shiite Muslim procession in Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi killed at least 20 people and wounded 60 more Monday, as Shiites across the country marked the key holy day of Ashoura.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Monday’s attack was carried out by a suicide bomber who detonated his explosives at the start of the procession.

Live television footage showed the blast and smoke billowing from the scene. Ambulances rushed to and from the area.

“So far, there have been 20 deaths reported in Civil Hospital. Around 60 more are wounded. Many of them are in critical condition,” said Provincial Health Minister Sagheer Ahmad, adding the death toll could increase.

Violence broke out in the aftermath of the bombing, with outraged Shiites at the procession firing shots in the air, said police officer Raja Umer Khatab. An Associated Press reporter at the scene said others used stones to pelt police and paramilitary forces, who had been guarding the march, in anger over the blast.

Television footage showed police cars and ambulances damaged, with windows smashed and doors and hoods ripped open.

Karachi Mayor Mustafa Kamal called for calm.

“I want to appeal to the people, to my brothers, my elders to stay calm. I am hearing people are clashing with police and doctors. Please do not do that. That is what terrorists are aiming at. They want to see this city again on fire,” he said.

Security has been tightened across Pakistan for Ashoura, which is the 10th day of the holy month of Muharram, a month of mourning commemorating the seventh-century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. Muharram has often been marred by bombings and fighting between Pakistan’s Sunni Muslim majority and its Shiite minority. Some parts of the Muslim world celebrated Ashoura on Sunday. Hard money training.

Iranian security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters in the capital Sunday, killing at least four people in the fiercest clashes in months, opposition Web sites and witnesses said.

Thousands of opposition supporters chanting “Death to the dictator,” a reference to hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defied official warnings of a harsh crackdown on any protests coinciding with a religious observance on Sunday. Iranians were marking Ashoura, commemorating the seventh-century death in battle of one of Shiite Islam’s most beloved saints.

Security forces tried but failed to disperse protesters on a central Tehran street with tear gas, charges by baton-wielding officers and warning shots fired into the air. They then opened fire directly at protesters, killing at least three people, said witnesses and the pro-reform Web site Rah-e-Sabz.

Witnesses said one of the victims was an elderly man who had a gunshot wound to the forehead. He was seen being carried away by opposition supporters with blood covering his face.

The clashes marked the bloodiest confrontation between protesters and security forces since the height of the unrest in the weeks after June’s disputed presidential election. The opposition says Ahmadinejad won the June election through massive vote fraud and that its leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was the true winner.
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Buddhist monks chanted on white-sand beaches in Thailand and thousands prayed at mosques in Indonesia to mark the fifth anniversary of the Asian tsunami that left 230,000 people dead.

The devastating Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami struck a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean rim. Its towering waves wiped out entire coastal communities, devastated families and crashed over tourist-filled beaches the morning after Christmas. Survivors waded through a horror show of corpse-filled waters.

In Thailand, hundreds of residents and foreigners returned to the beaches on the island of Phuket to recall one of the worst natural disasters of modern times.

A moment of silence was observed on Phuket’s Patong Beach, a popular strip of hotels and restaurants, to mark the moment the tsunami struck.

Buddhist monks in bright orange robes chanted prayers. Onlookers wept and embraced.

Giorgio Capriccioli, an Italian who lives on Phuket, carried a bouquet of white flowers into the ocean.

He waded knee-deep in water that five years ago was clogged with corpses and cast the flowers adrift to honor the memory of two friends. His wife owns several beach-front shops but decided not to go to work the morning the tsunami struck.

“My wife would be dead if it weren’t for the fact that she were pregnant and didn’t go to work that day,” he said at a ceremony that also attracted suntanned tourists in skimpy swimsuits, as well as Thai villagers.

The ceremonies on Phuket were to culminate in the evening with candle-lighting ceremonies and the release of hundreds of light-filled lanterns into the sky.

Thousands of survivors in Indonesia’s Aceh province, which was hardest-hit, held prayer services at mosques and beside the mass graves where tens of thousands were buried. Indonesia’s loss of about 167,000 accounted for more than half the total death toll.

The tsunami was sparked by a 9.2-magnitude underwater earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra — the mightiest earthquake in 40 years.

In Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, the quake toppled homes and buildings and sent panicked communities rushing into the streets. About 20 minutes later, a wall of water up to six stories high surged in from the sea. Traveling at jetliner speed, the wave carried with it toppled trees, crumpled cars and refrigerators. It sent people scrambling up the sides of buildings and in search of higher ground.

On Saturday’s anniversary, Indonesian villagers briefly panicked when another strong earthquake struck deep under the sea off the eastern coast, officials said. Residents in Saumlaki, about 1,680 miles (2,700 kilometers) east of the capital Jakarta, said the magnitude 6.0 quake caused an electricity blackout, but there were no reports of damage or injuries.

Indonesia sits above a series of fault lines that make the vast island nation one of the most earthquake-prone places in the world. This year, another earthquake measuring magnitude 7.6 struck off West Sumatra on Sept. 30, killing hundreds of people and toppling hundreds of homes and buildings.

After the 2004 tsunami, more than $13 billion in aid money poured in from around the world, nearly half for Aceh, where bridges, homes and full city blocks of cement buildings had collapsed. In some communities of the devout Muslim province only the mosque was left standing.

A huge reconstruction effort has rebuilt Aceh, providing more than 140,000 new homes, 2,227 miles (3,585 kilometers) of roads, 1,500 schools and 1,047 hospitals.

“After five years … the people of Aceh have risen and have a new life,” Indonesia’s Vice President Boediono told a crowd gathered near Ulee Lheue port in Aceh. Like many Indonesians he uses only a single name

“Their struggle to rise from tsunami tragedy has inspired the people in this country, and around the region,” said Boediono.

Traffic across Sri Lanka came to a standstill Saturday as people around the country observed two minutes of silence for the 35,000 people who died there. Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake presided over a ceremony in northwestern Kurunegala that was broadcast on live television. Hard money training.

A pediatrition charged with sexually abusing his patients likely attacked more than 100 children at an office he had decked out with a merry-go-round and a ferris wheel, a state official said Wednesday.

The volume of evidence seized from Dr. Earl Bradley’s practice and home, including video tapes and computer files, makes it difficult to estimate the number of victims, said Alexis Slutsky, a deputy attorney general assigned to the state’s Child Predator Task Force.

“I’m comfortable in saying probably well over 100 potential victims,” she said at a news conference with Attorney General Beau Biden and other law enforcement officials.

Slutsky said the investigation is focusing on cases between 1998 and the present.

Bradley, 56, was arrested last week and is being held in prison on $2.9 million bond. He has been charged with 33 felony counts relating to seven victims. A preliminary hearing Wednesday was postponed until Jan. 14. His attorney, Eugene Maurer, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Stacy Cohee, a deputy attorney general, said Bradley was not brought to the courthouse for Wednesday’s hearing because corrections officials are “concerned about his mental state right now,” adding that there were concerns he is suicidal.

The case has shocked the close-knit community of Lewes, a town of about 3,100 on the Delaware coast. The case is even more chilling because some alleged victims are no more than 6 months old.

“It’s horrific,” said Wallace Hudson, vice president of Beebe Medical Center just blocks from Bradley’s home. Bradley had privileges at the hospital which were immediately suspended when he was arrested. Pennsylvania’s state board of medicine also announced an immediate temporary suspension of Bradley’s license there.

Police say Bradley used video cameras to record some of the attacks.

An 18-page document detailed the alleged attacks in exam rooms, which had Disney themes such as Pinocchio, at BayBees Pediatrics, Bradley’s solo practice. A detective who viewed the assaults described in court papers the 6-foot, 225-pound Bradley as having a “violently enraged expression on his face” in one video involving a 2-year-old.

“As of this moment, we have not identified all of the victims in this case, and the investigation is ongoing in an aggressive fashion,” Biden said.

Bradley’s office was known for its many toys and the rides he had in front. On Wednesday, the deserted office looked more like a small run-down carnival than a pediatric office, including a small merry-go-round and Ferris wheel. A pink sign in front of one building read: “Princess Parking only. All Others will be toad.”

Hudson said Bradley had been in the area since 1994. He said the hospital has arranged for counseling for patients and their parents. He also said doctors who already have full practices have arranged to take Bradley’s patients, who he estimated “runs in the thousands.”

Mike Duckworth, treasurer of the Bethel United Methodist Church near Bradley’s home, said the charges have brought “a lot of shock” in the neighborhood and to the parents of children in the church’s preschool program. Hard money training.

Family members of a fallen marine hailed as a drug-war hero were slain by a gang allied with a top drug lord in retaliation for the cartel leader’s death, a state official said Wednesday.

Four people who are believed to be informants and aides for the Zeta gang were detained in the deaths of the mother, two siblings and aunt of Melquisedet Angulo, Tabasco state Attorney General Rafael Gonzalez said.

Angulo was the only marine who died in a Dec. 16 raid that killed drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva.

The Zetas, former military elite-turned-hit men, have allied with the Beltran Leyva cartel in recent years.

The detained suspects — three men and one woman — either served as lookouts for the Zetas or transported money to pay the gunmen, who are still at large, Gonzalez said.

“The motive was an agreement this group made as a result of the events of Dec. 16,” he told a news conference.

On Tuesday, a day after the navy honored Angulo as a national hero at his memorial service, gunmen burst into the family home in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco and shot to death four relatives. One sister survived but was seriously wounded.

President Felipe Calderon called the attack “a cowardly act” and vowed to press forward with his war on the cartels involving more than 45,000 Mexican troops.

Mexico’s drug gangs frequently employ networks of lookouts and informants to perform logistics. Police have also been found to be on cartel payrolls, and Gonzalez later told local news media that some officers may have allowed — or helped — the assailants escape after Tuesday’s attack.

Mexico’s drug cartels sometimes stage retaliatory hits on military or law enforcement after the arrests or killings of top traffickers. In Tabasco, they had previously staged two such attacks on police officers and their families.

Assailants tossed hand grenades at government offices in the northern state of Sonora late Tuesday. No one was injured, but state officials there said they are on alert for possible reprisals for Beltran Leyva’s death.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission on Wednesday questioned the policy of releasing the names of soldiers and police who have died fighting drug cartels. The government commission suggested officials respect their right to privacy.

The cartel’s violent rage may have been further stoked this time by graphic photos published in local and international news media of Beltran Leyva’s bullet-riddled body. Leyva was killed in a shootout with marines last week in an apartment in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. Six of his bodyguards also died. Hard money training.

An American Airlines flight from Miami with more than 150 aboard overshot a runway while landing during a heavy rainstorm in Kingston on Tuesday night, injuring more than 40 people, officials said.

Flight 331 skidded across a road at Norman Manley International Airport and halted at the edge of the Caribbean Sea, apparently prevented from going into the water only by the upward slope of the sand. The nose of the jet was less than 10 feet from the water.

Some 44 passengers were taken to nearby hospitals with broken bones and back pains, Information Minister Daryl Vaz told The Associated Press. Four people were seriously injured, said Paul Hall, senior vice president of airport operations.

The plane’s fuselage was cracked, its right engine broke off from the impact and the left main landing gear collapsed, said Tim Smith, an American Airlines spokesman at the company’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. Most of the injuries were cuts and bruises and none were life threatening, though he had no further details, he said.

Some passengers leaving the plane were seen with cuts on their faces or bloody lips. Some looked visibly shaken as they bustled out of the terminal wrapped in red blankets, while others ducked under umbrellas to escape the heavy downpour.

The Boeing 737-800, which originated at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., had taken off from Miami International Airport at 8:52 p.m. and arrived in Kingston at 10:22 p.m. It was carrying 148 passengers and a crew of six, American said. The majority of those aboard were Jamaicans coming home for Christmas, Vaz said. Hard money training.