Terrorism | featured news

A U.S. military task force has discovered that part of a $2.16 billion transportation contract was diverted through a murky network of subcontractors and into the hands of a group of Afghan power-brokers, criminals and Taliban insurgents, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

The 32-year-old man accused of devastating twin attacks in Norway now maintains that two cells of extremists collaborated with him, court officials said here Monday as they ordered solitary confinement for the suspect. The police also significantly reduced the confirmed death toll in the Friday attacks to 76 instead of 93 — still one of the worst mass killings in postwar Europe.

At least 80 people died when a gunman opened fire at a Norwegian island youth camp, hours after a bomb attack on the capital, Oslo.

A massive bomb shattered Norway's main government building in Oslo Friday, killing two people police were quoted as saying by local news agency NTB.

Two Taliban spokesmen said their mobile phones, emails and a website had been hacked and messages issued on Wednesday falsely reporting the death of the movement's supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Chinese officials blame ethnic Uighur Muslim separatists for Monday's fatal attack on a police station in Xinjiang province.

Officials in Mumbai, India, have corrected the death toll from Wednesday's blasts, saying that 18 people were killed.

A massive explosion ripped through a military base in southern Cyprus, witnesses said on Monday, with the official news agency reporting at least eight people dead.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who arrived in Kabul on Saturday, also said the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing key leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

A new U.S. counterterrorism strategy will focus on the ability of al Qaeda and its network to inspire people in the United States to attack the homeland, said John Brennan, White House counterterrorism adviser.