– Kandahar provincial council chairperson Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, was killed by a visitor to his home.
– French President Nicolas Sarkozy said today that France will withdraw 1,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012.
– After delaying a deal of about half the size, Iraq may purchase as many as 36 fighter jets from the U.S. in a transaction worth billions of dollars.
– U.N. torture investigator Juan Mendez said the United States is violating U.N. rules by refusing him unfettered access to Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who accused of passing classified documents to WikiLeaks.
– Libyan emissaries are indicating that Muammar Qaddafi is ready to leave power and is exploring a political solution to the five month insurrection.
— Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani voiced his support for talks between Tehran and Washington, telling an interviewer, “I think today we can utterly negotiate on an equal footing and mutual respect with the United States.”
— John Brennan, the top U.S. counter-terrorism official, urged Yemen’s interim leader to agree to a brokered agreement for a peaceful and constitutional political transition in Yemen.
– A Washington think-tank reports that the Chinese have improved their satellite reconnaissance technology to allow for longer-term observation of targets, putting the spy devices on par with those from the United States.
– After backlash from the ATF’s “Fast and Furious” program, “the Justice Department will begin requiring firearms dealers in California and other border states to alert officials anytime they sell more than two semiautomatic rifles to someone in a five-day period.”
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