The Colombian navy has seized a submarine hidden in a jungle area, believed to have been built to carry up to eight tons of cocaine to Mexico.

The 31-meter-long vessel was found on Monday in Timbiqui, in south-western Colombia, and is capable of travelling 9 meters below water, navy officials said.
The homemade submarine, which was one of the most sophisticated and biggest ever found, could carry four people and up to eight tons of cargo, and was ready to launch, the officials added. 

"It is the first submersible to be seized in the country," said General Jaime Herazo. 

Herazo believes that the ship belongs to "narco-traffickers coupled with narco-terrorists, who received a heavy blow [due to its capture]." 

Commander of the Pacific Naval Force, Adm. Hernando Wills Velez, said the submarine was equipped with professional navigational equipments, which would have allowed the crew to sail as far as Mexico.

The Argentine government is moving to lodge an official protest to Washington following the seizure of undeclared weapons and drugs aboard a US military plane.

Argentina plans to formally protest to the United States and call for assistance in investigations into the US Air Force's attempt "to violate Argentine laws by bringing in hidden material in an official shipment,” said a statement released by Argentine Foreign Ministry late Sunday, AFP reported.

On Thursday, Argentine customs officials searched a US Air Force C-17 transport plane at Ministro Pistarini International Airport, located 22 kilometers (13 miles) southwest of Buenos Aires.

Aboard the plane the officers discovered an illicit cargo which had not been declared in a manifest submitted by the US embassy to Argentine authorities. 

A serviceman with the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) force has lost his life in a non-combat related incident in the troubled eastern part of Afghanistan.

"A NATO service member died as a result of a non-combat injury in eastern Afghanistan," a Press TV correspondent cited a brief press release by the security mission on Wednesday as saying. 

The alliance did not announce the name or nationality of the victim.

The latest death brings to 47 the number of fatalities among foreign troops in war-ravaged Afghanistan so far this year.

Last year, nonetheless, with a death toll of 711, remains the deadliest year for foreign military casualties. The number eclipsed the previous record of 521 in 2009. 

Afghanistan's Minister of Energy and Water Mohammad Ismail Khan has strongly rejected a plan to erect permanent US military bases in his country.

Speaking on Tuesday in a ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of Soviet troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ismail Khan slammed Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak for his support of the plan. 
Ismail Khan pointed out that the defense minister should change his stance as he had ignored the dignity of Afghan people. 

The minister of energy and water further reiterated that the Afghans would be capable of providing security in the war-hit country if foreigners stop interfering. 

“Millions of Afghans were killed and injured because they wanted to live freely, and they did not accept to be in foreigners' subjection,” Ismail Khan noted. 

The Afghan Interior Ministry says police forces have detained five Taliban attackers who intended to target government installations in the southern province of Kandahar.

The ministry said police arrested the militants, equipped with explosives-ridden jackets and homemade bombs, on Monday, before they managed to carry out the attacks. 

Kandahar province is one of the main strongholds of Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan. The militants also seem to be gaining ground in eastern and northern provinces.
Militant attacks have left hundreds of Afghan and US-led foreign troops dead over the past months.
US-led NATO has admitted to the rising power of the militants in Afghanistan despite the presence of 150,000 US-led forces in the country.

The Pentagon has admitted in several reports that the US has failed to establish security in the war-torn country. source

A Finnish soldier serving with US-led foreign troops has been killed and several others wounded in the volatile northern Afghanistan.

The soldier died in an explosion in the Northern Province of Samangan. 

Finland has around 180 soldiers in Afghanistan.

At least 44 foreign soldiers have been killed in the war-torn country so far in 2011.

Last year was the deadliest for foreign forces in Afghanistan -- with over 711 foreign troops killed.

NATO has admitted to the rising power of the militants in Afghanistan despite the presence of 150,000 US-led forces in the country.

The invasion of Afghanistan took place with the official objective of curbing militancy and bringing peace and stability to the country. Nine years on, however, Afghanistan remains unstable and civilians continue to pay the price.

The rising death toll among the US-led foreign forces has prompted growing opposition to the Afghan war in countries that have contributed troops to the mission. source

A report says that Washington spends $300 million of American taxpayers' money on Afghan war per day, and this comes as the US has failed so far to establish security in the war-torn country.

This is while the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq will allow for a reduced US defense budget in 2012. 

Under the Pentagon's proposed budget, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will drop to $117.8 billion for fiscal year 2012, a reduction of $41.5 billion from the previous year, AFP reported. 

As the US war effort winds down in Iraq, the budget sets aside $10.6 billion for “Operation New Dawn,” with the remaining 50,000 US troops there due to withdraw by the end of 2011. 

Spending for the Afghan mission calls for $107.3 billion, down slightly from the last budget, which requested $113.5 billion. 

The budget released Monday offered no insight into the scale of the planned drawdown, with the Pentagon's budget document assuming an average of 98,250 troops on the ground by the end of 2012. 

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the Pentagon had "decided to budget conservatively" as it was too soon to predict how many troops would be withdrawn after July. 

"But that's not to say that we will have 98,000 troops at the end of Feb. 2012. In fact it's a lead pipe cinch we won't," he added. 

The budget for Afghanistan and Iraq includes $79.2 billion for operations, $10.1 billion to counter the threat posed by homemade bombs -- the main killer of NATO-led troops in the war. 

Some $11.9 billion is devoted to repairing and replacing equipment lost or damaged and $12.8 billion for training and arming Afghan security forces, who are supposed to gradually take over security duties between now and 2015. 

By October, the United States and NATO plans to expand the Afghan army to 172,000 soldiers and the police to 134,000 police.

Iranian scientists have successfully neutralized the impact of a sophisticated malware designed to disrupt Tehran's nuclear program, says a recent report.

According to a draft report released by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), Iranian scientists have shown vigilance in keeping the virus from disrupting their low-enriched uranium production. 

“It did not stop … or even delay the continued buildup of low-enriched uranium," the ISIS report reads. 

In July 2010, Western and Israeli media claimed that the Stuxnet, a computer worm that is viewed as potentially the most destructive piece of computer malware discovered, has targeted industrial computers around the globe, with Iran identified as the main target of the attack. 

The reports insisted that the country's Bushehr power plant was at the center of the cyber attack. 

Iranian officials, however, dismissed such claims, saying that the Stuxnet was detected early by Iranian experts and thus caused no damage to the country's industrial sites. 

Hundreds of Israelis have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv to protest against rising fuel prices caused by a spike in tax rates.

A tax surcharge imposed last month and high global oil prices have brought the price of a liter of petrol in Israel to $1.97. 

In addition to mounting domestic political pressure, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu has recently been under fire for the soaring prices of food and gasoline. 

He, however, has promised the Israelis to take a series of economic measures to curb the rapidly rising prices. 

The Israeli cabinet has vowed that it would raise wages and lower the prices of water, public transportation and gasoline.

Even members of Netanyahu's party have been hard on him over the past days, arguing that the high prices of basic goods and fuel would hurt the poor and middle-classes. source

US students have been a prime target for the United States military, which looks for new recruits on high school campuses, a new report reveals.

Parents at a Los Angeles-area high school told Press TV that US military recruiters are harassing their children and behaving inappropriately toward them. 

Parents said they are concerned about how available their children are to the army recruiters.

Students, parents, and community organizers are outraged at the inappropriate behavior they say military recruiters are conducting on campus.

Ya Basta Youth Coalition in Los Angeles, along with dozens of students and parents, has organized a protest outside North Hollywood High School to protest army recruitment in the schools.

“Basically, recruits (recruitment officers) are on campus whenever they want. They are violating district policy,” said the protest organizer, Miguel Zavala. 

The UK government is spearheading talks with the notorious terrorist group Taliban in Afghanistan, now, into the tenth year after the US-led invasion of the country.

As the US-led occupation of Afghanistan enters its tenth year, casualties have risen among Afghan civilians and NATO troops alike, making the last 12 months the bloodiest of the conflict to date. 

US and British troops are engaged in a dirty war in Afghanistan, using aerial bombing, drone attacks, torture prisons and corporate mercenaries against the Afghan people, all of which are fuelling further insecurity and fostering human rights abuse. 

Britain joined the countries that invaded Afghanistan under the US command after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on US soil on the pretext that the masterminds behind the attacks - al-Qaeda and the Taliban - must be uprooted. 

But, the multinational force led by the US military have neither been able to defeat terrorism nor they succeeded in their attempts to uproot the terrorists the US and British intelligence agencies claimed have taken refuge in the mountains of Afghanistan. 

EU leaders have failed to narrow down their differences over a broad package of measures drafted to fight fiscal crisis in the bloc as the deadline looms for a deal.

The European Union finance ministers met in Brussels on Tuesday to try to reach an agreement on the proposed measures with no apparent success. The meeting, during which the ministers evaluated the six anti-crisis proposals, was held amid growing concerns that they might miss the deadline set for March 11 to resolve differences, a Press TV correspondent in Brussels reported. 

Hungarian Finance Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy, who chaired Tuesday's summit, stated that the evaluation raised 11 questions, only one of which was resolved at the meeting. 

The finance ministers agreed to set up a permanent eurozone rescue fund, known as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which will come into effect from January 1, 2013 and will have an initial capacity of 500 billion euros ($ 674 billion).