What is behind Taliban arrests?

A senior Taliban commander is likely to have been killed by an air strike in Pakistan's north-west, officials say.

The interior minister said he assumed Maulana Faqir Mohammed was dead after helicopters hit a building in Mohmand region, killing at least 16 militants.

Faqir Mohammed - one of the Pakistani Taliban's top figures and commander in the Bajaur tribal area - has been the focus of recent Pakistani action.

Former military heads say a request for helicopters was denied

Two former heads of the armed forces have strongly challenged Gordon Brown's evidence to the Iraq war inquiry.

The prime minister, who was chancellor when the war began, said the military had been given everything it asked for.

But Lord Guthrie, ex-chief of the defence staff, said in the Daily Telegraph that armed forces had been denied a request for more helicopters.

Six people died and at least 15 were rushed to the hospital after a charter-style bus struck the back of another vehicle and rolled over on westbound Interstate 10 about 15 miles south of Ahwatukee.

The westbound lanes are closed at mile post 173, and the road is expected to be closed for several hours as the accident scene is investigated and cleaned up.

Traffic is being rerouted to State Route 587 until further notice.

4 passenger ferries stuck in ice off Swedish coast

STOCKHOLM — Sweden's sea rescue service says four passenger ferries with more than 1,000 people on board are trapped in ice in the Baltic Sea.

The Swedish Maritime Administration says that there are 1,133 passengers and crew on the four ships, which have been stuck for hours just off the Swedish coast.

Rescue spokesman Peter Lindquist says no one is hurt and there are currently no plans to evacuate, but rescue helicopters and military hovercraft are on standby in case people need to be brought off the ships.

BEIJING -- China warned the U.S. on Thursday against any future arms sales to Taiwan and reaffirmed its decision to suspend military exchanges over Washington's plan to sell $6.4 billion in military hardware to the island.

China demands that the U.S. "speak and act cautiously" to avoid further damaging ties and upsetting relations between Beijing and Taiwan, Defense Ministry spokesman Huang Xueping was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

On Thursday, hours before the planned start of the largest allied offensive in Afghanistan since 2001, U.S., Afghan and British troops were moving into final position. Airborne infantrymen waited for the helicopters that would drop them into the town of Marjah after midnight. Giant minefield breachers, mounted on tank chassis, inched onto the plains east of town, ready to move at first light Friday.

An armada of helicopters ferried troops into the Marjah area of Nad-e-Ali district before dawn, and soldiers quickly engaged in sporadic firefights with waiting gunmen.

The operation, in a district which has become a hub of insurgent fighters, bomb-makers and opium-growers, has been described as the biggest of the war in Afghanistan.

Commanders said the force was making good progress against hundreds of Taliban fighters.

MARJAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S.-led NATO troops launched a major offensive on Saturday against the Taliban's last big stronghold in Afghanistan's most violent province, a test of President Barack Obama's troop surge strategy.

The assault, the first since the U.S. president ordered an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in December, is the start of a campaign to impose government control on rebel-held areas this year, before U.S. forces start to withdraw in 2011.

MARJA, Afghanistan - Thousands of American, Afghan and British troops attacked the watery Taliban fortress of Marja early Saturday, moving on foot, in trucks and through the air to destroy the insurgency's largest haven and begin a campaign to reassert the dominance of the Afghan government in a large swath of southern Afghanistan.

The force of about 6,000 Marines and soldiers - a majority of them Afghan - began moving into the city and environs before dawn.

KABUL (AP) - Helicopters ferried rescuers to and bodies away from the site of a massive avalanche that blocked an important mountain pass north of Kabul as the death toll soared Wednesday to 166, officials said. Hundreds more remained trapped in snowbound cars.

Afghan army troops dug through huge snowdrifts trying to rescue people from buried vehicles in the Salang Pass, a key road that connects the Afghan capital with the north.

KABUL (AP) - A series of avalanches engulfed a mountain pass in Afghanistan, trapping hundreds of people in their buried cars and killing as many as 64 people so far, authorities said Tuesday.

Rescuers brought in bulldozers, ambulances and helicopters in a massive effort to reach victims stuck in the frigid snow along the 12,700-feet-high (3,800-meter) Salang Pass, which links the Afghan capital Kabul with the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

If the United States Olympic moguls team is worried about the conditions at Cypress Mountain, it doesn't show.

Trucks and helicopters were still dumping snow onto Cypress Mountain on Monday in an effort to get the Olympic venues ready for the Vancouver Games, which open Friday.

The first event scheduled is women's moguls qualifying on Saturday, with the finals to be raced later that day.

"I've skied on rocks, I've skied on ice, I've skied in the rain. This is nothing," World Cup champion Hannah Kearney said Monday ahead of her first pre-Olympic practice run.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least two people died and dozens were injured on Sunday when a massive explosion leveled a gas power plant under construction in Middletown, Connecticut, police said.

The local CBS station WFSB reported on its website that up to 250 people were feared hurt. Scores of ambulances and several helicopters rushed to the scene of the Kleen Energy plant on the banks of the Connecticut River.

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. - A large explosion at a power plant on Sunday has killed an unknown number of people and injured many others, officials report.

CNN, citing police officials, reported two people were dead.

Black smoke was seen billowing the Kleen Energy Systems plant, which was under construction along the banks of the Connecticut River, and helicopters were airlifting victims to area hospitals.

The explosion at around 11:30 a.m. could be heard from up to 10 miles away, and some mistook it for an earthquake.

China on Tuesday renewed its pledge to punish U.S. companies that are involved in Washington's plan to sell weapons to Taiwan, in another sign of Beijing's increasingly assertive foreign policy.

At its semiweekly media briefing, China's foreign ministry criticized the Obama administration's decision to sell antimissile systems, helicopters and other arms to Taiwan in a package valued at a total of $6.4 billion. Spokesman Ma Zhaoxu didn't give details of the sanctions, but pledged to retaliate against companies involved in the sale.

BEIJING-China's suspension of military exchanges with the U.S. in retaliation for a $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan heightens the risk of friction between Beijing and Washington at a time when they are already at loggerheads over a host of security and economic issues.

China announced the freeze on military exchanges Saturday, and summoned the U.S. ambassador to Beijing for a formal complaint, following the Obama administration's announcement Friday that it is proceeding with the sale of antimissile systems, helicopters and other arms to Taiwan.

MACHU PICCHU PUEBLO, Peru – Helicopters ferried out the last tourists stranded near Machu Picchu on Friday, leaving the country to contemplate a prolonged shutdown of its top tourist site.

A total of 3,900 tourists and local people were flown out of the tiny mountain village of Machu Picchu Pueblo this week after mudslides and torrential rains on Sunday destroyed sections of the railway that is the only form of transit in and out of the village below the Machu Picchu citadel.

Just a day after London's summit on Afghanistan, gunmen wearing suicide vests occupied the unfinished hotel yards from the governors' offices and around two miles from the headquarters of British military and aid efforts in Afghanistan.

British helicopters and troops supported Afghan forces as they fought for hours. The battle came the day after international agreement was reached to set up a trust fund to coax away moderate Taliban fighters.

Afghan troops, backed by Nato helicopters, have clashed with Taliban fighters after they attacked United Nations and government buildings in Helmand province, witnesses and officials said.

The Taliban fighters launched the assault in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of the southern region, early on Friday.

Provincial officials said two attackers blew themselves up and one Afghan soldier had been slightly injured in the fighting.

About 1,400 tourists have been airlifted from near the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru following floods that destroyed road and rail links.

A break in the weather allowed the government to send in helicopters, but about 800 tourists are still stranded.

Tourists' patience has been stretched, with prices for some goods soaring.

The Machu Picchu site, which attracts more than 400,000 visitors a year, will be closed for several weeks after the heaviest rainfall for 15 years.