Indonesian police Saturday were studying DNA evidence from the remains of two suicide bombers who carried out twin attacks on luxury Jakarta hotels, as security was tightened across the country.
Suspected Islamist suicide bombers detonated powerful devices at the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels in an upmarket business district Friday, leaving nine dead and up to 50 injured including at least 18 foreigners.
A New Zealand businessman was confirmed dead and Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who is due in Jakarta later Saturday, said he feared the worst for three missing Australians, …

A Somali teenager accused of being one of the pirates who held an American sea captain hostage has been flown from Africa to the US to face trial.
Abde Wale Abdul Kadhir Muse is the first person to be tried in the US on piracy charges in more than a century, the Associated Press news agency says.
He was held over the seizure off Somalia of Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship.
Earlier, his mother appealed to US President Barack Obama to free him.

An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama’s helicopter, according to a report by WPXI, NBC’s affiliate in Pittsburgh.
Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., reportedly discovered a security breach that led to the transfer of military information to an Iranian IP address, according to WPXI. The information is said to include planned engineering upgrades, avionic schematics, and computer network information.
Incoming search terms:obamas helicopterobama\s helicopterobama helicopter iraqsaudi choperhelicoptere marine onemarine one …

One day before U.S. President Barack Obama’s Canadian visit last week, Canadian fighter jets intercepted two Russian bombers near Canadian air space, the defense minister said Friday.
“At no time did Russian planes enter Canadian air space, but within 24 hours of the president’s visit here … we did scramble F-18 fighter planes from NORAD in Canada command,” Peter MacKay said in a news conference in Ottawa.
The Russian planes were in international waters, about 118 miles (190 kilometers) northeast of Tuktoyuktuk, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

Four soldiers with U.S.-led coalition forces and an Afghan civilian working for them were killed in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, the U.S. military said.
It said the coalition troops were on a patrol with Afghan security forces, but did not give any further details.
Some 38,000 U.S. troops are currently serving in Afghanistan alongside another 30,000 from 40 other mostly NATO nations.

U.S. President Barack Obama, in his first major military decision as commander-in-chief, has ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan to tackle an intensifying insurgency, the White House said on Tuesday.
But in an interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Obama also said military means alone would not solve the problem.
U.S. officials have said Washington and its allies are not winning in Afghanistan, more than seven years after toppling the Taliban for giving sanctuary to al Qaeda leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

US officials are looking for alternative ways of transporting soldiers and goods to Afghanistan after a decision by the Kyrgyz government to close a US base on its soil.
The Manas airbase near the capital Bishkek serves as an important supply route for US and Nato operations in Afghanistan.
It was set up by the United States in 2001 to support Operation Enduring Freedom – the US-led fight against al-Qaeda and the Taleban in Afghanistan.

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea wants to advance nuclear disarmament steps if its aid demands are met and it played down concerns over possible missile launches, a former senior U.S. diplomat just back from Pyongyang said on Saturday.
Pyongyang, which may be moving to test-fire its longest range Taepodong-2 missile in a bid to grab the attention of new U.S. President Barack Obama, said it had the right to make such a launch.
Stephen Bosworth, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and now dean at the Fletcher School of diplomacy at …

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s military clamped a vehicle ban Monday on the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar after tribal sheiks sent gunmen into the streets claiming Sunni rivals linked to the Shiite-led government stole votes in last weekend’s elections.
The vehicle curfew was lifted the next morning with no reports of violence, the Iraqi military said, but the ban was an indicator of a brewing crisis threatens to trigger new violence in Anbar. The province is a vast, mostly desert territory that had been center-stage in the Sunni insurgency until tribes there …

Israeli warplanes bombed a weapons production facility in Gaza on Thursday after militants fired a rocket at Israel, in violence that defied the efforts of a visiting U.S. peace envoy to reinforce a ceasefire.
There were no reports of injuries from the predawn Israeli strike in the town of Rafah, along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Witnesses and Hamas Islamists said a metal foundry was damaged.
Moments earlier, a militant group with links to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement claimed responsibility for firing a rocket at southern Israel late on Wednesday.