WAR DEVELOPMENTS

UNITED STATES

> Gen. Peter Chiarelli on Wednesday said an increasing number of U.S. soldiers are being sidelined with muscle and bone injuries caused by carrying combat loads weighing as much as 130 pounds, and the numbers are likely to rise as more soldiers are shipped to Afghanistan, where the terrain and road conditions are much more challenging than in Iraq.

> Senior counterterrorism officials say an East Africa-based terrorist group that is recruiting young men from the Minneapolis area has ties to al-Qaida. They say young Somalis who have disappeared from their homes in Minnesota could be being trained by al-Shabab insurgents in Somalia to return to the U.S. to conduct attacks.

GUANTANAMO

> The Obama administration is planning to appoint a special envoy to oversee closure of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, terrorism detention camp. Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, is expected to be named to the new job, which will include negotiating the transfer of Guantanamo inmates to third countries, mainly in Europe.

IRAQ

> Saddam Hussein’s former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for his role in the 1992 executions of 42 merchants accused of price gouging while Iraq was under U.N. sanctions. The conviction was the first against Aziz, who for years was the former regime’s public face to the West. Saddam’s cousin “Chemical Ali” al-Majid, already facing three death sentences, also got a 15-year prison sentence in the case, and two of Saddam’s half-brothers, a former interior minister and a former director of public security, were sentenced to death.

AFGHANISTAN

> NATO officials say 15.6 million people, 35 percent to 38 percent of them women, have been registered to vote in Aug. 20 elections in Afghanistan that will elect a new president and 34 provincial assemblies. NATO members are preparing to send thousands of extra troops to the country to make sure Taliban insurgents don’t disrupt the voting.

> Gunmen in the southern city of Kandahar killed Jawed Ahmad, 23, an Afghan journalist detained in 2007 and held for 11 months by the U.S. military, which accused him of having contact with Taliban leaders. It was not clear who was behind the killing.

> The Afghan Supreme Court upheld a 20-year prison sentence for journalism student Parwez Kambakhsh, 24, who was accused of blasphemy for asking questions in a university class about women’s rights.

PAKISTAN

> Pakistan rounded up hundreds of opposition activists Wednesday and banned protests today in two provinces, hoping to thwart an anti-government march on the capital. The growing political unrest raised the specter of a possible military intervention.

ITALY

> Italy’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday threw out charges against 26 Americans accused of involvement in the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect in Milan in 2003, saying they were based on classified information. State lawyer Massimo Giannuzzi said that means the prosecution will have to seek new indictments based on the remaining evidence or reopen the investigation.