Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for abandoning Islam for Christianity will be released for mental evaluation soon, possibly today, potentially defusing a case that sparked international outrage and caused many to question which way the country was heading. A Kabul court tossed out the case yesterday, sending it back to the prosecutor's office for more investigation, Judge Ansarullah Mawlawizada said. Doctors will evaluate whether Abdul Rahman is mentally ill. The court also wants to know whether Rahman, 42, holds a passport for another country.

Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan Ann Jones Metropolitan Books / 336 pages / $24 Ann Jones arrived at Kabul airport in the early winter of 2002 and stepped into a thick, gray pall of wood smoke, diesel exhaust and desert dust. It was about a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the American author, best known, perhaps, for her book Women Who Kill, was anguished by reports of civilians killed and injured in the American bombing campaign against the Taliban. So she came to spend three winter seasons as a foreigner, or kharaji, trying to make amends and help the people of one of the poorest, sickest and most disorganized nations on earth.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- The rumors fly around in this dusty old city like lint in the wind. There's talk of kidnappings that may or may not have happened. Talk of al-Qaida or the Taliban calling for the abduction of Western women. Talk of the Taliban and al-Qaida resurgence. Kabul is an ugly city, for the most part, a ramble of low structures, some still showing damage from the wars that have been fought here in the last three decades. The air is full of choking dust blowing particles of stuff you don't even want to think about.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber on a motorbike drove into a convoy of Afghan National Army soldiers boarding minibuses outside their training base on the edge of Kabul yesterday, killing nine people and wounding 28, the Afghan Defense Ministry's spokesman said. The dead were eight military personnel and a civilian bus driver, said the spokesman, Gen. Zaher Azimi. The attacker also died. The bombing was the first major incident of violence since Afghanistan's parliamentary elections 10 days ago and the first suicide attack in Kabul in months.

COLLEGE PARK - NBC's top foreign correspondent told graduates of the University of Maryland's flagship campus last night to explore the world and think critically about public affairs. "Your challenge is to pierce those false facades wherever you find them," Andrea Mitchell told 6,000 students who received undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Comcast Center. "Demand more from your government, your employers, and ultimately demand more from yourselves." Mitchell and other speakers raised the specter of the Sept.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Abdul Saboor is a small, quiet man with the wispy mustache of a teenager. He wears a tan V-neck sweater and clutches his geology books tightly to his chest. But last week, the Kabul University engineering student joined anti-U.S. protests and dreamed of "doing whatever I could to an American." He was one of hundreds who marched through the streets in the Afghan capital after hearing reports that a U.S. investigation had confirmed desecration of the Quran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Despite growing concerns about the United States' influence in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai called yesterday for a tighter bond between the two nations and possibly a permanent U.S. military base. In a news conference in Kabul with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Karzai said Afghan citizens wanted a long-term relationship with the United States. "They want this relationship to be a sustained economic and political relationship and most importantly of all, a strategic security relationship to enable Afghanistan to defend itself, to continue to prosper, to stop the possibility of interferences in Afghanistan," he said.

KABUL, Afghanistan - After flying from Washington to the other side of the world, first lady Laura Bush spent six hours in Afghanistan yesterday, praising the courage of Afghan women and pledging more U.S. help for the war-torn country. She shook the hands of many Afghan women, some of whom shyly held scarves across their faces. She told them how happy she was to meet them, and she wished them all good luck. "I bring the very best wishes of the American people," she told a discussion group at the new women's teacher-training institute in Kabul.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Three American aid workers were among the 104 passengers and crew feared dead after their plane crashed Thursday afternoon in the mountains southeast of Kabul, according to reports in the Afghan news media yesterday. The plane, a Kam Air Boeing 737 en route from Herat, in the west, came down in heavy snow after failing in its first attempt to land at the Kabul airport, they said. Nine Turkish citizens were also on the plane, the Turkish government announced. Six of the crew members were Russians from Kyrgyzstan, and two were Afghans.

KABUL, Afghanistan - At the newly repaired National Museum of Afghanistan, the first exhibition in 13 years, is a display of life-size pre-Islamic idols smashed by the Taliban three years ago and now painstakingly restored by museum and international experts. The wooden statues from Nuristan, one of Afghanistan's mountainous northeastern provinces, are an apt subject for an inaugural exhibition. Museum staff had worked hard to hide the collection from looters and Islamic fundamentalists intent on destroying all idols and artistic depictions of the human form.