French police commandos arrested 19 people and seized weapons in Friday morning swoops on people suspected of radical Islamist activity, in several cities including Toulouse, scene of the killings of four Jews and three soldiers this month.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is waging an uphill battle for re-election in an April-May vote, said more such raids would follow.

Sarkozy said in an interview with journalists that the trauma of the Toulouse shooting was "very deep in our country," NBC News reported.

He said it was "a bit -- I don't want to compare the horrors -- a bit like the trauma that followed in the U.S. and New York after 9⁄11."

"We cannot leave it without making any conclusions. The Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs have taken the decision to forbid a certain number of predators on French soil .... We don't want people who have values contrary to those of the Republic being invited on French territory," Sarkozy added.

BBC News, citing a source, reported that the arrests were not connected with the killings of seven people by Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman, who was buried Thursday after he was cornered and shot dead by police.

French gunman buried in Toulouse

Merah killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three French paratroopers in three separate attacks that revived worries about Islamist extremism and shook up the French presidential campaign.   

Jewish school gunman linked to French spies?

The BBC noted that after Merah was killed, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins had said that accomplices were still being sought.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Martin Langer / Greenpeace via AP

After a gas leak was discovered, a two-mile exclusion zone has been set up around the offshore platform in the North Sea, about 150 miles from the eastern coast of Scotland.

The French oil company Total believes it has found the source of the gas leak from a North Sea platform, the Elgin, the Guardian reported. A flame continues to burn in the stack above the platform since a leak was discovered on Sunday.

The 238 workers were evacuated Monday from the platform, about 150 miles off the coast of eastern Scotland. The company cut electricity sources to avoid sparks.

The leak was in a rock formation about 2.5 miles beneath the seabed, the Guardian reported. Total said it has sent two firefighting vessels to the scene.

Union leaders urged oil companies to evacuate rigs and platforms within five miles of the Elgin, the Guardian reported.

In a statement posted on the company’s Facebook profile, Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier, a spokesman for Total said the situation was stable but that "zero risk does not exist."

“A gas cloud is always a fire hazard," Saulnier said. "As a result, we have made every effort to reduce this risk as much as possible. The British authorities have taken protective measures.”

Environmental groups warned Thursday that the highly pressurized gas that is leaking could trigger an oil spill, the Christian Science Monitor reported. The Monitor noted that the leak occurred the same week that the U.K. oil and gas industry announced it had started a deep-water hunt for resources off the western Scottish coast.  

"The industry is trying to squeeze out the very last of the Earth's reserves and companies such as Total, BP and Royal Dutch Shell are pushing themselves into exploration that is extremely difficult, costly and risky," said Charlie Kronick, a senior climate adviser at Greenpeace U.K., according to the Monitor.

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Spc. Ryan Hallock/Dvids/ Handout / EPA

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, pictured here at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California in August 2011, has been charged with 17 counts of murder in the deaths of 17 Afghan villagers.

Here are two versions of what happened the night of March 11, when 17 Afghan villagers were shot to death.

First, the Army version: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, troubled by marriage woes, drunkenly left Camp Belambai, 12 miles from Kandahar, with a pistol and an automatic rifle and killed six people as they slept. Bales then returned to the base and left again for another village, this time killing 11. He acted alone and he admitted to the killings, according to the Army.

Then there is the account that child witnesses provided Yalda Hakim, a journalist for SBS Dateline in Australia. Hakim, who was born in Afghanistan and immigrated to Australia as a child, is the first international journalist to interview the surviving witnesses. She said American investigators tried to prevent her from interviewing the children, saying her questions could traumatize them. She said she appealed to village leaders, who arranged for her to interview the witnesses.

Watch the SBS Dateline video "US alerted over Bales behaviour"

In the video, the children told Hakim that other Americans were present during the rampage, holding flashlights in the yard.

Noorbinak, 8, told Hakim that the shooter first shot her father’s dog. Then, Noorbinak said in the video, he shot her father in the foot and dragged her mother by the hair. When her father started screaming, he shot her father, the child says. Then he turned the gun on Noorbinak and shot her in the leg. 

“One man entered the room and the others were standing in the yard, holding lights,” Noorbinak said in the video.

A brother of one victim told Hakim that his brother’s children mentioned more than one soldier wearing a headlamp. They also had lights at the end of their guns, he said.

“They don’t know whether there were 15 or 20, however many there were,” he said in the video.

Army officials have repeatedly denied that others were involved in the massacre, emphasizing that Bales acted alone.

Obama: Afghan shooting rampage was work of lone gunman 

Bales, who was flown to a maximum-security military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., was charged last week with 17 counts of murder and six attempts of attempted murder.

Staff Sgt. Bales charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghanistan massacre 

The massacre came several days after a roadside bomb attack that cost one soldier his leg. Village residents told reporters and Afghan government officials that after the roadside bomb attack, U.S. troops lined up men from the village against a wall and told them they would pay a price. The Pentagon has denied those allegations.  

Pentagon: No evidence that Afghan massacre was a retaliation

Gen. Karimi, assigned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate the murders, told Hakim that he, too, wonders whether Bales acted alone and how he could left the base without notice.

“Village elders said several soldiers took part and that there is boot prints in the area,” Karimi told Hakim. He said villagers told him that they saw three or four individuals kneeling and that helicopters were overhead during the rampage.

“To search for him?” Karimi said he asked them.

“No,” he said they told him. “They were there from the very beginning.”

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Vyacheslav Oseledko / AFP - Getty Images

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul

The U.S. ambassador to Russia was back at it again Thursday on Twitter with questions about how Russian media gets hold of his schedule, raising broader concerns about surveillance during a time of tension between Washington and Moscow.

Michael McFaul, no stranger to Twitter controversy since taking up his post in Moscow in January, told his more than 21,300 followers he was frequently dogged by representatives of NTV, a Kremlin-friendly television station.

"Everywhere I go NTV is there. Wonder who gives them my calendar? They wouldn't tell me. Wonder what the laws are here for such things?" McFaul said in one tweet posted to his account, @McFaul.

"I respect press right to go anywhere & ask any question. But do they have a right to read my email and listen to my phone?" McFaul also tweeted. "When I asked these 'reporters' how they knew my schedule, I got no answer."

McFaul was apparently describing an encounter with a self-described NTV television crew before a meeting with a Russian human rights activist.

Footage of the encounter posted on the NTV website shows a clearly irritated but mostly smiling McFaul, coatless under a wet snow, sparring for several minutes in Russian with a woman holding a microphone who says she is from NTV.

"Your ambassador to our country walks around all the time without this. They do not interfere with his work. And you are always with me -- at home," McFaul said in the clip.

"Aren't you ashamed to do this? It is an insult to your country when you do this, do you understand that?"

He said his meeting with activist Lev Ponomaryov, whom he said he has known for 25 years, was part of his job, just like a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev two days earlier.

Blogger Alexey Navalny, a vocal opponent of Vladimir Putin, reacted to McFaul's tweet on his own account, saying "I don't understand McFaul. He's got diplomatic immunity. He can just lawfully beat up the NTV journalists. Come on, Mike! One for all!"

State Department officials described McFaul's tweets as rhetorical and said they did not necessarily reflect formal concerns over surveillance by the Russian government or media.  

"A rhetorical question, in and of itself, is not directed at anyone," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

"Many of our chiefs of mission have Twitter accounts and they are allowed to express themselves. We have full confidence in their ability to express themselves on matters of U.S. policy."

Tripping up on Twitter
McFaul is among a number of senior U.S. diplomats who have taken to Twitter as the State Department attempts to harness social media to get the U.S. government's message across.

But the personal style of the new communication has at times caused controversy.

The Russian government rebuked McFaul, a former White House adviser on Russia, earlier this month after he tweeted his concern over the detention of protesters who challenged Vladimir Putin's presidential election victory.

Russia and the United States say they are committed to improved ties, but have seen differences grow over issues including the Syrian crisis and U.S. plans for a missile defense shield in Europe.

Putin accused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December of stirring protests against his 12-year rule by encouraging "mercenary " Kremlin foes. Washington has dismissed the accusations.

McFaul, a Stanford University professor who specialized in analyzing the development of democracy in Russia and the former Soviet Union, was criticized by Russian state television when he arrived to take up his new post in January.

Following a meeting with opposition leaders shortly after his arrival, a commentator on state television said McFaul was not an expert on Russia but simply a specialist in the promotion of democracy.

Other commentators and media reports have suggested he is seeking to help opponents topple the government. A film aired on NTV earlier this month hinted that opposition demonstrations were funded by the White House with the aim of undermining Putin.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Sgt. Dennis Weichel, 29, of the Rhode Island National Guard died saving the life of a little girl in northeast Afghanistan, according to the Rhode Island National Guard.

According to the report, Weichel was in a convoy in Laghman Province last week when he noticed some children were in the path of the moving vehicles. Weichel and other soldiers got out to move them out of the way.

According to the press release, while most of the children scattered away, one girl went back to the road, as a Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle continued moving toward her.

Weichel saw the massive truck moving toward the girl and grabbed her out of the way, the National Guard said. The girl survived, but Weichel died after the armored vehicle ran over him.

The National Guard said Weichel's remains will be returned to Rhode Island on Saturday, according to the NBC Providence affiliate. The Army said Weichel leaves three children, a fiancee and his parents.

U.S. Army

Sgt. Dennis Weichel Jr., a Rhode Island Army National Guard infantryman mobilized with Company C, 1st Battalion, 143rd Infantry Regiment, sits inside a Black Hawk helicopter prior to a mission earlier in his deployment in Afghanistan.

The circumstances of Weichel's death speak to his character, Staff Sgt. Ronald Corbett, who deployed with Weichel to Iraq in 2005, said in a U.S. Army press release.

"He would have done it for anybody," said Corbett. "That was the way he was. He would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He was that type of guy."

Weichel was posthumously promoted to sergeant, according to the press release.

Corbett said Weichel was considered a fun-loving guy, but he was also a professional.

"When I first heard, I kept expecting him to jump up and say, 'Oh, I got you guys,'" said Corbett. "The last few days have hit me hard."

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A well-known conservationist was recovering Thursday after being attacked by a tiger at his wildlife park in South Africa.

John Varty, whose work has appeared on the National Geographic Channel, was attacked at Tiger Canyons on Wednesday, his staff posted online.

Varty is out of surgery, they added. "The report from the doctor is positive, however, we anticipate that John will remain in ICU for 3 more days as part of the pain management medication. 

"The doctor will closely monitor his condition, which includes several puncture wounds and two broken ribs. The danger of infection will also be closely monitored."

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Honduran authorities say at least 13 people have died at a prison after armed inmates started a fire during a riot Thursday.

San Pedro Sula police commissioner Yair Mesa says there are at least 13 dead, but the riot has been brought under control.

Inmates began fighting among themselves and tossed the severed head of one prisoner over the walls of the jail as they held firefighters at bay, according to one report.

La Prensa de Honduras reported the riot occurred after a fight broke out between groups of inmates following the discovery of the decapitated body of Mario Alvarez in a cell.

The fire, which allegedly occurred in the prison kitchen, according to La Prensa, was controlled by firefighters who had to leave the jail because of threats from inmates.

The grisly scene at the prison in the northern city of San Pedro Sula came 1 1/2 months after Honduras' overcrowded prisons were hit by the worst prison fire in a century, a Feb. 14 blaze at the Comayagua farm prison that killed 361 inmates.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Josep Lago / AFP - Getty Images

A wounded protester gets assistance following clashes with riot policemen during a demonstration in Barcelona on March 29, 2012 on a national strike day.

Flag-waving Spanish workers livid over labor reforms they see as flagrantly pro-business blocked traffic Thursday, forming boisterous picket lines outside wholesale markets and bus garages, as part of a nationwide strike.

Unions claimed massive participation in the 24-hour stoppage protesting what they claim to be the latest dose of bitter medicine Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government has prescribed to appease European Union overseers and jittery investors watching Spain's debt grow and its GDP shrink.

Police arrested a number of protesters in Madrid, while small-scale violence flared in Barcelona, Spain's second city. Tourists were locked out of the Alhambra, a 14th-century Moorish palace in the southern city of Granada which is one of Europe's great cultural monuments.

The unions demanded a "gesture" from the government to scale back the reforms, warning they could cause more unrest from May 1.

The government quickly said no, and downplayed the impact of the strike, which failed to bring the country to a standstill. "There is no stopping on the path to reform," Labor Minister Fatima Banez said.

In fact, the government will on Friday serve up even more austerity pain with a 2012 budget to feature tens of billions of euros (dollars) in deficit-reduction measures.

PhotoBlog: Workers strike in Spain filling streets and closing businesses

The cuts are designed to help Spain lower its deficit to within EU limits and calm the international investors who determine the country's borrowing costs in debt markets — and therefore have a lot of say in whether Spain will follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal in needing a bailout.

There were no reports of significant violence in Thursday's demonstration. A total of 58 people were detained and nine were injured in scuffles as the strike got under way a minute after midnight, Interior Ministry official Cristina Diaz said.

Unions are challenging a conservative government not yet 100 days old, protesting changes to labor market rules long regarded as among Europe's most rigid. Among other things the changes make it cheaper and easier for companies to lay people off and let them cut their wages unilaterally.

On the Gran Via, one of the Spanish capital's main commercial strips, a group of about 500 whistle-blowing picketers marched slowly, blocking traffic for about an hour. Police and helmeted riot police watched from the sidelines.

As the group made its way down the boulevard, many merchants — such as jewelers and clothing retailers — pulled down their metal shutters or locked their front doors.

PhotoBlog: Spanish protests turn violent, destructive

One protester, Angel Andrino, 31, said he was laid off a day after the labor reforms were approved in a decree last month. The government argues that while the reforms might hurt now, they will create jobs in the future. Spain is by official estimates already back in recession.

Andrino lives with his parents and brother, the latter the only one to be employed, with a part-time job.

"We are going through a really hard time, suffering," he said. "The rights that our parents and grandparents fought for are being wiped away without the public being consulted."

General Workers Union Secretary General Candido Mendez put average participation at midday at 77 percent but said that it was 97 percent in industry and construction. "This strike has been an unquestionable success," said Mendez.

Some statistics, however, suggested the strike had not brought the country to a standstill.

Electricity consumption — a measure of industrial and commercial activity — was down by 17 percent at mid-morning, according to the Interior Ministry. That is slightly less than during the last general strike in 2010, which was deemed only partially successful.

Investors are worried about prospects for continued, widespread social unrest of the kind seen in bailed-out Greece. But management professor Jose Ramon Pin of IESE Business School said this will not happen in Spain because people reluctantly accept that the country needs a radical economic makeover.

"This country is in no mood for taking to the streets," Pin said.

One of the strike's most noticeable effects was on public transportation, with unions guaranteeing only around 30 percent of normal service at rush hour times.

"We're offering the government a chance to start a different path (of reform) in search of wider consensus," Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, head of Spain's largest union Comisiones Obreras said. "If not there will be rising social conflict."

 The main airline, Iberia, canceled 65 percent of its flights.

By mid-morning, 402 flights had been canceled, National airport operator AENA said. Minimum services decreed by law ensured that 1,675 flights would operate — less than half of the average daily amount of more than 4,500 flights.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, has won $1.7 million after being awarded the 2012 Templeton Prize for his work linking science and wider questions of faith and religion.

Tenzin Gyatso, 76, the 14th Dalai Lama, will be presented with his award at a ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in May.

The Tibetan monk, believed by his followers to be the reincarnation of an ancient Buddhist leader, has not yet said how intends to spend the cash.

The prize comes at a time of heightened tension between Tibetans and Chinese authorities.

China boosts security in Tibet following protests

In a video response on the John Templeton Foundation website, he described the award as recognition of his “little service to humanity."

John Templeton Jr., son of the late prize founder, said the Dalai Lama “offers a universal voice of compassion underpinned by a love and respect for spiritually relevant scientific research that centers on every single human being."

Q&A: The Dalai Lama, Tibet and China

The foundation said the prize is the world's largest annual monetary award given to an individual.

The Dalai Lama, who has both a Facebook and a Twitter account, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

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The gunman who claimed responsibility for France's worst terror attacks in years was buried Thursday in a Toulouse cemetery, ending a tortured debate over what to do with the body of a man the president called a "monster."   

France is still reeling from the killings of three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers that revived worries about Islamist extremism and shook up the French presidential campaign.   

Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman, was buried Thursday in the Muslim section of a cemetery in the Toulouse neighborhood of Cornebarrieu. About 20 men attended the ceremony, hiding their faces from reporters gathered outside.   

"It's all over. We aren't talking about it anymore. He is in his grave," Abdallah Zekri of the French Muslim Council, or CFCM, said afterward.   

Those attending the ceremony were mostly young friends of Merah's from the housing projects where he grew up, Zekri said.    Zekri, who was present for the burial, led protracted negotiations in recent days with Merah's family, Algerian authorities and Toulouse authorities over where to bury him.   

Police say Merah filmed himself killing seven people in a spate of attacks earlier this month. Merah, who espoused radical Islam and said he had links to al-Qaida, was shot in the head after a standoff with police last week in the southern city of Toulouse.   

Was Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah an informant for French spies?

His brother is in custody on suspected complicity and police are looking for a potential third man who might have helped.   

Merah's father said that he wanted Mohamed buried in a family plot in the Medea region of Algeria, a solution that seemed to satisfy French officials uncomfortable with the question of what to do with his remains.   

With that plan in mind, Merah's body was brought to the Toulouse airport Thursday, and his mother had been expecting to accompany it to Algiers on a flight later in the day.   

But Algerian authorities refused for "reasons of public order," Zekri said.   

Plans were made to bury Merah at the Muslim cemetery in Toulouse -- but the Toulouse mayor objected and tried to delay it another day. Sarkozy, on the campaign trail for next month's presidential elections, intervened.   

Father of Toulouse gunman wants to sue France for killing son

"Let him be buried, and let's not create a debate about this," Sarkozy said.   

Under pressure from the central government in Paris, the mayor relented, and agreed to an evening internment.   

Attention will now focus on the investigation.   

Merah's brother has been handed preliminary charges of alleged complicity in preparing the killings, though his lawyer insists that Abdelkader Merah had no idea what his brother was plotting.   

Abdelkader Merah told investigators that a third man helped the Merah brothers steal a motorbike used later in the killings, two police officials said Thursday. Merah did not give the name of the other man.   

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named.   

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LONDON - Britain pledged $800,000 in support of Syrian opposition groups Thursday, three days ahead of a 70-nation summit that will seek to unify those against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

In a statement on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website, William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, said the “non-lethal” assistance would help the groups “develop themselves as a credible alternative to Assad and his regime."

The United States is still deciding what sort of support to provide, but is expected to make a similar pledge at the Friends of Syria conference in Istanbul, Turkey on Sunday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will use the summit to pressure the country's divided opposition to unite. Without that step, there is little chance Assad's opponents can oust him without a military intervention the West clearly does not want.

Global action on Assad to step down has been largely limited so far to diplomatic and economic pressure, a stark contrast to the NATO air campaign that former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi faced in a similar uprising last year.

There is also disunity among Arab nations about what action to take. At the Arab League meeting in Baghdad on Thursday, leaders dropped a demand that Assad step down but urged him to act quickly on a U.N.-backed peace plan he has accepted.

Syria's opposition groups continue to demand that Assad must go and have not agreed to peace talks.

Fewer than half of the 22 Arab League heads of state are attending the summit, which is perhaps an indication of Sunni and Shiite tension in the region since the beginning of the Arab Spring.

President Barack Obama discussed providing medical supplies and communications support to the Syrian opposition with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan this week.

The United States may back further "non-lethal" aid for the opposition at the Istanbul meeting. But as is the case in Britain, there was no talk of arming the rebel military forces such as the Free Syria Army.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of State told msnbc.com there had been no change to its current position of exploring options.

"The United States has been trying to find a responsible way to help, using sanctions and ‘moral support,'" said Joe Holliday, a security expert at the Institute for the Study of War.

"But it has been a balance between restraint and achieving the outcome it wants, getting Assad to go," he said.

Britain has already given $715,000 worth of non-military practical support, including communications assistance and training and advice to Syrian human rights defenders.

Assad faces mounting pressure from the West, from fellow Arab nations and even from staunch ally Russia. The United Nations says over 9,000 people have died since the Syrian uprising began last year.

A report in the New York Times said refugees fleeing Syria have described an alarming rise in sectarian conflict in the country, with Sunni Muslims claiming to have been shot at by neighbors who are members President Assad’s minority Alawite sect.

Umm Nasser, 34, a pregnant woman sheltering with female residents and their dozen children in a farm building over the border in Lebanon, told the newspaper that about 15 members of her family in the village of Joussi came under fire from the nearby Alawite village of Hasbeeh two weeks ago as they tried to leave their house.

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Paul Goldman / NBC News

Abu Nidal, 70, stands on his land in the Palestinian village of Al-Walaja. Construction of the Israeli security barrier can be seen in the background.

AL-WALAJA, West Bank –  Palestinian activists are calling for a “Global March to Jerusalem” this Friday to mark Land Day, an annual event that commemorates the killing of six Arabs who were protesting the Israeli practice of expropriating Arab land to build Jewish settlements on March 30, 1976.

Since then Palestinians have commemorated March 30 as Land Day and have turned it into a general day of protest against what they see as discriminatory practices by the Israeli government.

But 70-year-old Abu Nidal doesn’t need a special calendar day to remind him of the Israeli occupation and their confiscation of his land. Nidal just needs to wake up every morning and look outside his window to see how the Israelis are confiscating his land.

 He lives in the village Al Walaja, nestled in the hills between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Half of the village of just over 2,000 is considered to be part of Jerusalem and the other half is part of the West Bank. So now the Israeli security wall snakes through the village.

“Land Day is like a music record being played over and over,” he said. “I live out of despair with no future in sight, I see no light only darkness.”

'Global March to Jerusalem': Israel's borders on high alert as huge protests loom

When the Israelis sent huge yellow bulldozers to the village in 2010 to start working on the separation wall, no one bothered to check on whether or not the wall ran through Nidal’s farm land – which it does. And it has not only been 86 olive trees that were up rooted by the approximately 26-foot high concrete barrier, but also Nidal’s family graveyard.

Paul Goldman / NBC News

Parts of the Israeli security wall are still under construction, while others are already snaking through the West Bank village Al-Walaja.

It was his grandmother’s wish that every family member be buried on their 11-acre farm land. But the Israelis have a different plan for the confiscated land. They are planning to build not only the wall, but a recreational park for Israelis on the other side of the wall.
As it stands now, Nidal can only look at his mother and grandmother’s graves from a distance with the dreadful knowledge that soon the wall will be his only view.

“It’s not only a question of land confiscation, but also of making our life so miserable that we will have to pack up our lives and leave,” Nidal said. “But, of course, I want to be buried alongside my mother.”

This Friday when demonstrators take to the streets commemorating Land Day, Nidal won’t join them; his battle is being waged in the Israeli courts. But he pointed out that his case doesn’t have much of a shot. “The court is Israeli, the judge is Israeli and the lawyers are Israelis.  It’s a losing battle.”

Nidal’s story is just one out of many. There are approximately 2,300 Palestinians living in the village of Al Walaja and everyone I talked to had a similarly desperate story. The common theme to all the stories is the feeling they live in a prison surrounded by a wall and Jewish settlements.
 

Aly Song / Reuters

51-year-old vendor Ge Yaohua eats a hard-boiled egg cooked in boys' urine at his stall in Dongyang, Zhejiang province.

DONGYANG, China - Officials in China have listed a local food delicacy of eggs soaked in boys' urine as part of the region's intangible cultural heritage.

Every spring, street vendors in the city of Dongyang sell 'virgin boy eggs' as a unique snack.

There is no good explanation for why it has to be boys' urine, just that it has been so for centuries.

The scent of these eggs being cooked in pots of urine is unmistakable as people pass the many street vendors in Dongyang who sell it, claiming it has remarkable health properties.

Aly Song / Reuters

A vendor pours a bucket of boys' urine into a pot of hard-boiled eggs.

"If you eat this, you will not get heat stroke. These eggs cooked in urine are fragrant," said Ge Yaohua, 51, who owns one of the more popular "virgin boy eggs" stalls.

"They are good for your health. Our family has them for every meal. In Dongyang, every family likes eating them."

It takes nearly an entire day to make these unique eggs, starting off by soaking and then boiling raw eggs in a pot of urine. After that, the shells of the hard-boiled eggs are cracked and they continue to simmer in urine for hours.

Vendors have to keep pouring urine into the pot and controlling the fire to keep the eggs from being overheated and overcooked.

Ge said he has been making the snack, popular due to its fresh and salty taste, for more than 20 years. Each egg goes for 1.50 yuan ($0.24), a little more than twice the price of the regular eggs he also sells.

Many Dongyang residents, young and old, said they believed in the tradition passed on by their ancestors that the eggs decrease body heat, promote better blood circulation and just generally reinvigorate the body.

Aly Song / Reuters

51-year-old vendor Ge Yaohua shows the inside of a hard-boiled egg cooked in boys' urine at his stall

"By eating these eggs, we will not have any pain in our waists, legs and joints. Also, you will have more energy when you work," said Li Yangzhen, 59, who bought 20 eggs from Ge.

The eggs are not bought only at street stalls. Local residents are also known to personally collect boys' urine from nearby schools to cook the delicacy in their homes.

The popularity of the treat has led the local government to list the "virgin boy eggs" as an intangible cultural heritage.

Aly Song / Reuters

51-year-old vendor Ge Yaohua (R) passes a bag of hard-boiled eggs cooked in boys' urine to a customer holding her baby on a street in Dongyang, Zhejiang province.

But not everyone is a fan. Chinese medical experts gave mixed reviews about the health benefits of the practice, with some warning about sanitary issues surrounding the use of urine to cook the eggs.

Some Dongyang residents also said they hated the eggs.

"We have this tradition in Dongyang that these eggs are good for our health and that it would help prevent things like getting a cold," said Wang Junxing, 38. "I don't believe in all this, so I do not eat them."

Shoppers in Ireland got a large surprise when a 5,500 pound elephant ran away from her circus and wandered around a parking lot.

Drivers called police on Tuesday after seeing the 40-year-old animal - called ‘Baby’ - wandering between cars parked outside stores in a suburb of Cork, according to a report in the Irish Examiner.

Handlers attempted to lead Baby back to the circus but the reluctant pachyderm made another dash for freedom, heading towards a nearby mall.

One driver claimed the Indian elephant had damaged his parked car while evading circus employees, the newspaper reported.

It said the animal was eventually stopped and escorted back to the circus, located a short distance away.

Irish broadcaster RTE reported the circus as saying Baby broke loose and ran away because she did not want to take a shower.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE MASUM GHAR, Afghanistan -- In a natural amphitheatre high among the jagged grey peaks of Afghanistan's Panjwai district, the shock of a village shooting rampage is still settling over U.S. soldiers who served with accused gunman Robert Bales.

The soldiers of Tacoma-based 3/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team were moving into areas inherited from Alaska-based troops, tracking their armored vehicles to memorize the mazy roads of southern province Kandahar, when more than a dozen people were shot dead in Belandai and Zangabad villages.

Bales' brothers in arms are perplexed and distraught by the March 11 slaughter, which has dragged U.S.-Afghan relations to new nadir, prompting President Hamid Karzai to demand a pullback of NATO forces from Afghan communities.

"We are all talking about Sergeant Bales. I talk with some of the soldiers who served with him and they are all surprised. It saddens the friends of his, because my understanding is it was totally out of character," 3/2 Brigade Chaplain Major Edward Choi told Reuters at the unit's headquarters at Forward Operating Base Masum Ghar.

Afghan massacre suspect's wife: 'He did not do this'

The U.S. military last week lodged 17 charges of premeditated murder against Bales, a four-tour veteran, ahead of what is expected to be a long trial. In theory at least, the death penalty is on the table.

Popular leader
Bales had been a popular leader, Choi said, making the massacre even more bewildering. Comrades reject reports his marriage had been in trouble ahead of an Afghan deployment he was reluctant to undertake.

"That is not the case," said Choi, shrugging in frustration. "People that knew him, that dealt with him personally, said he was a great NCO (non-commissioned officer), cared for soldiers, was tactically and operationally professional, loved his wife and kids."

Choi, whose small plywood chapel overlooks a wide river plain and brigade command fenced by concrete blast walls, said some of Bales' comrades had been stressed by moving into a dangerous area that birthed the Taliban, and where its one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammad Omar still has a home.

Three-hour firefight: Afghan militants attack NATO convoy

Choi said he had no doubt multiple deployments were taking a toll on some of the fighting men. New rules governing elite units like the one Bales was assigned to guard, and wandered from in darkness on the night of the killings, were likely.

"When I speak to some of my leaders, our concern is lack of oversight. There are conventional soldiers attached to special forces who are well trained, off on their own, very mature and growing beards and doing their own thing," he said.

"When you take a 19 or 20-year-old conventional soldier and put him into special operations, they might not be able to handle it."

Captain Janel Schlaudecker, a combat stress counsellor for U.S. soldiers in Panjwai, including Bales' unit, said while there was no explanation for what led to the massacres, she had not noticed an impact on the wider stress levels of Bales' brigade, even among the far-flung infantry units.

"It's so hard to judge how they would respond to this. But they are used to going out there and eating next to nothing, if anything," Schlaudecker said.

"They are used to being under a lot more pressure and not having a lot of sleep. They are wired completely differently. They are lot more resilient."

PTSD: Having the courage to ask for help

Tensions over the incident are still high in Panjwai, an insurgent hotbed west of Kandahar city, and the scene of some of the war's fiercest battles. Scores of Canadian soldiers were killed there before the Americans took over in mid-2011.

U.S. authorities have given the victims' families cash compensation of around $50,000 for each person killed, but at a meeting with district elders this week, U.S. officers and advisers were confronted by angry Afghans demanding to know why more was not done to prevent such an atrocity.

"Local people are very angry. I get hundreds of calls from people who want this soldier tried here, in Afghanistan," said Panjwai radio journalist Abdul Karim, who also runs a curio shop from a shipping container, used by U.S. troops.

Fighting season
Some soldiers worry the massacre will undo hard-won gains over the past year, when insurgent attacks fell 40 percent, and turn sentiment against incoming units of Bales' 3/2 Strykers ahead of the summer fighting months.

The 2012 fighting season is the last which will be fought by NATO in surge-level numbers, as the end-2014 deadline for the exit of most foreign combat troops approaches.

US orders more security for troops in Afghanistan

Insurgents have already carried out small attacks as a bitter winter recedes, but U.S. commanders say this does not mean an emboldened Taliban have brought hostilities forward.

"I think the coming summer will be bad and the new guys are worried," said Staff Sergeant Robert Nelson, 37, a garrulous ex-Marine from Texas who runs the 'Mission One' base shop at Masum Ghar for the outgoing 1/25 Arctic Wolves, now packing to leave.

Colonel Todd Wood, the outgoing U.S. commander for the 25th Infantry Division, said patrols were brushing lightly over Belandai and Zangabad to avoid provoking more anger, but he did not think the massacre would make the fighting months worse.

"Right now it's probably still too early to tell," said Wood, a weathered, hyperactive Iraq veteran from Iowa.

"We've still got villagers that will point out IEDs (improvised explosive devices), we've still got villagers out there that will warn us of a possible attack ... that hasn't changed," he said.

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A teen who prosecutors say was gang-raped, strangled and then set on fire has died, a hospital official said on Thursday. Oksana Makar's case sparked public protests in Ukraine.

Hundreds of people took to the streets earlier this month after police released two of 18-year-old Makar's three suspected attackers. Their parents reportedly had political connections and the move re-ignited a public debate on corruption in the ex-Soviet republic.

In the video Makar calls for her attackers to be castrated and imprisoned, according to local English language newspaper Kyiv Post. It named the suspects as Yevhen Krasnoschek, 23; Maksym Prisyazhnyuk, 24; and Artem Pogosyan, 22.

The three were arrested, but two -- whose parents had political connections -- were released without charge. They were re-arrested after the intervention of President Viktor Yanukovich who sent an investigating team to the town of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine.

'Her heart activity stopped'
Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko confirmed earlier this month that the parents of at least one of the three suspects were former government officials in the Mykolaiv region.

"Lung bleeding began and then her heart activity stopped," said Emil Fistal, head of the specialist burns unit whre Makar was taken for treatment. "We tried three times to revive her with defribillation."

According to local media reports, Makar met two of the three accused in a bar on March 10. After spending some time there with them, she went to the apartment of the third.

The reports say she was then raped and one of the suspected attackers tried to strangle her with a cord. They subsequently wrapped her in a blanket, took her to a pit on a building site and tried to set her body on fire before escaping.

She was found by a passing motorist and taken to hospital with serious burns. She had both feet and an arm amputated in surgery, according to the reports.

The Kyiv Post also published what it said was leaked video of one of the three suspects’ interrogation.

In that clip, the suspect, apparently Krasnoschek, said he was only trying to burn a pillowcase they had accidentally taken with them.

After disposing of Makar, the three suspects went to the supermarket to buy more vodka and, after that, stopped at a street kiosk for tea.

The BBC reported there have been several protests in Mykolaiv and elsewhere in Ukraine, including Odessa and Kharkiv, about the case and its handling by authorities.

Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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France 2 via AP

Mohamed Merah shown in this image from French TV station France 2

Mohamed Merah, the gunman who killed seven people including three Jewish children, may have been an informant for France's intelligence services, according to reports that raise further questions about whether authorities missed chances to prevent the attacks.

The 23-year-old, who is a French citizen of Algerian origin, shot dead three Muslim soldiers as well as three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school before being slain by police commandos at the end of a 32-hour standoff in an apartment in Toulouse.

It later emerged Merah had traveled to Afghanistan and Israel in 2010 and had been interviewed in November 2011 by the domestic intelligence agency Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (DCRI).

Bernard Squarcini, head of the agency, was quoted by French newspaper Le Monde as saying Merah asked for a local DCRI agent by name while he was holed-up in the apartment surrounded by police.

Father of Toulouse gunman wants to sue France for killing son

Squarcini told Le Monde that Merah shocked the female agent by saying: "Anyway, I was going to call you to say I had some tip-offs for you, but actually I was going to [kill] you.”

Merah, who told police he had been inspired to commit his attacks by al-Qaida, used the French word "fumer", which means "to smoke," which is a slang term that also means to "murder" or "waste."

Squarcini’s remarks to Le Monde were reported in other French media, including Liberation and Le Figaro.

'Not trivial'
Yves Bonnet, former head of an intelligence agency that was merged with DCRI in 2008, told Toulouse newspaper La Dépêche du Midi that it was significant that Merah appeared to have a regular contact at the DCRI. “Having a contact is not totally innocent,” he told the newspaper. “This is not trivial.”

Italian newspaper Il Foglio said Merah’s trip to Israel and Afghanistan in September 2010 was made with the knowledge of the French foreign secret service, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. However, London's Independent newspaper quoted a spokesman for the agency as dismissing that report as "grotesque".

Squarcini has since insisted Merah was not helping authorities, telling Liberation the gunman was not "an informer for the DCRI or any other French or foreign services."

Meanwhile, Merah’s body will be flown to Algeria on Thursday if the country agrees to receive it, an official at one of the biggest mosques in Paris told Reuters.

Abdallah Zekri said Merah's body was being kept at a hospital in Toulouse while Algerian authorities decided whether they were willing to receive it. French media had reported that Merah's father had requested burial in Algeria.

On Tuesday, Merah's father, Mohamed Benalen Merah, lashed out at French authorities for killing his son. The elder Merah, who lives in Algeria, had earlier said he wanted to sue France.

"France is a powerful country with huge resources," Merah told France 24 television. "They could have taken him while he slept. They could have used a sleep-inducing gas and taken him like a baby. Why were they so hasty? Why did they kill him?"

"They could have arrested him and had him face justice," he added.

However, the BBC said French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe responded: "If I were the father of such a monster, I would shut my mouth in shame.”

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Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

Palestinian schoolgirls walk past Israeli border policemen standing guard outside a Palestinian house in the center of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on Thursday after dozens of Jewish settlers took over the Palestinian property overnight, claiming they have legal ownership.

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Palestinian organizers are calling for massive demonstrations on Friday to mark Land Day, an annual event that commemorates the killing of six Arabs who were protesting Israeli land policies on March 30, 1976.

Tens of thousands are expected to participate in what organizers have billed a "Global March to Jerusalem." The plan is to have protesters from neighboring countries march up to the Israeli border to "demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians and to protect Jerusalem," according to organizers.

The future status of Jerusalem is at the heart of the Palestinian movement and is the theme for the global Land Day. East Jerusalem is regarded as the likely capital of a future Palestinian state.

For Palestinian farmer, a constant reminder of Israeli occupation

For many Palestinians, Land Day is an annual opportunity to demonstrate that Palestinians inside Israel, the West Bank and Gaza are united and share common goals. 

This year will mark 36 years since Israel’s practice of expropriating Arab land to build Jewish settlements provoked protests by Arab residents in the Galilee and Negev. In addition to the six people who were killed, over 100 wounded during the ensuing violence. Since then Palestinians have commemorated March 30 as Land Day and have turned the day into a general protest against what they see as discriminatory practices by the Israeli government. So it seemed an appropriate date for activists to hold their march. 

Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

An Israeli settler looks out the window of an occupied Palestinian house as an Israeli soldier stands guard in the center of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on March 29, 2012. Dozens of Jewish settlers took over the Palestinian property overnight, claiming they have legal ownership.

"The Global March to Jerusalem represents three things," said Barghouti. "First of all, the unity of the Palestinian people, and their struggle to achieve freedom and end occupation, for Palestinians in and out of Palestine; second, it affirms the centrality of the issues of land and Jerusalem to achieving Palestinian freedom; and third, it provides international solidarity with the Palestinian cause."

'Absolutely peaceful'
The organizers plan to send convoys of vehicles to approach Israel's borders simultaneously from four neighboring countries: Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. According to organizers, more than 600 institutions from 64 states have been involved in planning the march. Protests are also planned outside Israeli embassies in Europe and Arab countries. Organizers say they are hoping for 1 million people to demonstrate in various protests all over the world.

"The event is meant to be a non-violent protest that will include parliament members, citizens and religious figures from all over the world – including Jews, Israelis will also protest with us," Saied Yaqin, one of the march organizers, told NBC News.

Organizers of the march insist the protests will be orderly.

"This march is absolutely peaceful and non-violent, and we will try everything possible to prevent violence," Barghouti said. "Of course, if they use violence against us, the world should protest. But the march is absolutely peaceful and nobody will try to provoke violence."

But Israeli Defense Forces aren’t taking any chances.

A statement released by the IDF said they are "prepared for any eventuality and will do whatever is necessary to protect Israeli borders and residents."

Israel has also issued a stern warning to Arab countries and Palestinians to refrain from approaching the border.

Soldiers along the border have been instructed to be on high alert and they will reportedly have crowd-dispersal means at the ready and will also deploy marksmen. According to a Haaretz report, a so-called "skunk" device is being prepared that sprays a harsh-smelling substance at demonstrators. 

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- Insurgents ambushed a NATO coalition supply convoy in a mountainous area of western Afghanistan, sparking a three-hour firefight in which an Afghan soldier, five security guards and at least 14 attackers were killed, Afghan officials said Thursday.

Najibullah Najibi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army's western region, told The Associated Press that the battle raged Wednesday along a highway regularly used by coalition supply trucks in Bala Buluk district of Farah province.

"The fighting was intense and we sent in extra forces," Najibi said.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Jangir / AFP - Getty Images

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

There were varying estimates of the number of militants killed. 

Raouf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Police in the west, said more than 30 militants were killed and 10 others were
wounded.

Suicide vests found in Afghan defense ministry

Sayed Abdul Wahid, an official of the Arya security company, said his workers who were fighting with AK-47s were overpowered by
militants using heavy weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.

Slideshow:

Kevin Frayer / AP

In southern Afghanistan, the focus of the U.S. war effort, nearly all the Afghan soldiers are foreigners too. Photographer Kevin Frayer shows these soldiers in a series of portraits.

Launch slideshow

He said five of his employees were killed and five others were wounded by insurgents who burned three vehicles in the convoy.

US orders more security for troops in Afghanistan

Meanwhile. a service member with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force died after a blast caused by an improvised explosive device in southern Afghanistan, NBC News reported Thursday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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LONDON - Rapidly increasing global ownership of smartphones and tablets will expose consumers and governments to much higher risks of Internet fraud and hacking, according to an expert.

Martin Sadler, director of the Cloud and Security Lab at HP in Bristol, England, said the expected rise in the number of electronic devices -- connecting billions more people to the Internet -- would make cyberattacks more likely.

“The vast majority of software we will be using [by 2020] will be riddled with malware,” he warned.

“If you talk about four billion people going online by 2020, a large number of those people are in third world countries where they are looking for easy access to wealth or money – what better source of wealth than online?” Sadler said.

He said Internet crime would become “de-skilled” and added, “What today might be a very sophisticated attack on a nation state could by 2020 be an attack on you as an individual made by people who really earn very little a day – that kind of dollar-a-day threshold.”

“There are whole groups of people who haven’t realized the Internet is an asset and disruption of the Internet is something they can choose to do. Today we have about 30 percent of the world’s population online, but by 2020 we will have reached about 50 percent -- about four billion people,” Sadler said. “Of those four billion, almost all of them… are going to be engaged on the Internet with absolutely no idea what online security means.”

Professor Sadie Creese, director of the new research center at Oxford University, said cybersecurity "is on everyone's radar at the moment."

"We're already highly dependent on cyberspace for our home lives, our work lives, as a nation state, and globally, and that's just going to increase. And as our dependency increases, so does the attractiveness to people who would do us wrong," she said. “Even if we're not witnessing great acts of terrorism in cyberspace at the moment, many people believe it's a natural progression, and it's only a matter of time.”

“In reality, the days of defining a cyberspace and physical space divide are probably over. The truth of living today is we all coexist in both; we're entangled in a sense," Creese said. "We should expect everything that we see in what was previously considered physical space, to manifest in some way in cyberspace.”

The launch took place on Monday at the university’s historic Ashmolean Museum.

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France 2 via AP

A photo taken from video and provided by TV station France 2 shows Mohamed Merah.

The father of Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah told FRANCE 24 that he wants to sue the French state for failing to capture his son alive.

Benanel Merah told the French television on Tuesday that police besieging his son’s Toulouse flat were "hasty" and they “could have used sleep-inducing gas and taken him like a baby.”

Merah hired Algiers-based lawyer Zahia Mokhtari, according to the BBC. Mokhtari told French media that Merah considered his son murdered by security services.

Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, killed three Jewish children and a rabbi and three Muslim soldiers in southwestern France before he was shot by police commandos from the elite RAID unit after a 32-hour standoff in a suburban Toulouse apartment.

Merah's plan to take the French state to court has drawn criticism from French politicians, BBC reported.

"If I were the father of such a monster, I would shut my mouth in shame," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Tuesday, according to the BBC.

FRANCE 24 reported that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s chief adviser, Henri Guaino, told France Culture radio that while the man was “perfectly within his rights” to start legal proceedings, it would be “indecent."

“A little bit of decency right now would do everyone a lot of good," Guaino added. "To try to blame the state is the height of indecency. This monster killed in cold blood. French society owes him absolutely nothing.”

According to FRANCE 24, Merah left his family when Mohamed was 6 years old. His other son, Abdelkader, was placed under investigation for suspected complicity in the killing spree.

Mohamed's half-brother in Algeria, Rachid Merah, said his brother did not have any ties to al-Qaida, the BBC reported.

"I deny that formally, and I have doubts that he had any link with al-Qaida or Taliban or any terrorist organization in the world. And the fact that proves it is that France killed him before he could speak in a trial, while they could get him alive," Rachid Merah said.

Algerian authorities have not formally granted the Merah family's request to bury Mohamed in Algeria.

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Warming has led to changes in climate extremes such as heat waves, record high temperatures and, in many regions, heavy precipitation since 1950, the U.N. climate panel warned in a report Wednesday.

"It is very likely that there has been an overall decrease in the number of cold days and nights, and an overall increase in the number of warm days and nights, at the global scale," the scientists wrote.

Some populations are already living on the edge of disaster, given the projected increases in the magnitude or frequency of some extreme events in many regions, the report stated.

"Small increases in climate extremes above thresholds or regional infrastructure 'tipping points' have the potential to result in large increases in damages to all forms of existing infrastructure," the experts said.

In the past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has focused on the gradual rise of temperatures and oceans. This report is the first to look at less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes, which lately have been costing on average about $80 billion a year in damage.

The study forecasts that some tropical cyclones -- which include hurricanes in the United States -- will be stronger, while the frequency might diminish.

"Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase, although increases may not occur in all ocean basins," the experts stated. "It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged."

Some other specific changes in severe weather that the scientists said they had the most confidence in predicting include more heat waves and record hot temperatures worldwide and increased downpours in Alaska, Canada, northern and central Europe, East Africa and north Asia.

"We mostly experience weather and climate through the extreme," said one of the report's top editors, Chris Field, an ecologist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "That's where we have the losses. That's where we have the insurance payments. That's where things have the potential to fall apart.

Read the full report from the IPCC

"There are lots of places that are already marginal for one reason or another," Field said. But it's not just poor areas: "There is disaster risk almost everywhere."

At 592 pages long, the report elaborates on a summary of findings released last November.

The report specifically points to New Orleans during 2005's Hurricane Katrina, noting that "developed countries also suffer severe disasters because of social vulnerability and inadequate disaster protection."

In coastal areas of the United States, property damage from hurricanes and rising seas could increase by 20 percent by 2030, the report said. And in parts of Texas, the area vulnerable to storm surge could more than double by 2080.

Already, U.S. insured losses from weather disasters have soared from an average of about $3 billion a year in the 1980s to about $20 billion a year in the last decade, even after adjusting for inflation, said Mark Way, director of sustainability at insurance giant Swiss Re. Last year that total rose to $35 billion, but much of that was from tornadoes, which scientists are unable to connect with global warming. U.S. insured losses are just a fraction of the overall damage from weather disasters each year.

The scientists say that some places, particularly parts of Mumbai in India, could become uninhabitable from floods, storms and rising seas. In 2005, over 24 hours nearly 3 feet of rain fell on the city, killing more than 1,000 people and causing massive damage. Roughly 2.7 million people live in areas at risk of flooding.

The IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts around climate change.

Since then, the IPCC has also come under fire from those questioning whether warming can be attributed to mankind's burning of fossil fuels. Critics found a flawed analysis of Himalayan glacier melt, and a few other questionable data, but overall the thousands of pages of IPCC documents have stood the test of scientific review.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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U.S. troops in Afghanistan are being guarded more closely and are taking other steps to protect themselves from attacks by Afghan troops, the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, said Wednesday.

Allen ordered the measures in recent weeks after a spate of 16 attacks in which U.S. and other coalition forces were killed by Afghan soldiers. Some of the killings were believed triggered by the accidental burning of Qurans and other religious materials.

New measures include the use of so-called "guardian angels" — troops who guard others as they sleep. Americans can now carry weapons in some ministries and have moved their desks so they can keep an eye on the door. Two officers were killed at their desks in the Interior Ministry in Kabul.

While Allen did not detail the new measures in a briefing earlier this week, he acknowledged that changes had been made.

"We have taken steps necessary on our side to protect ourselves with respect to, in fact, sleeping arrangements, internal defenses associated with those small bases in which we operate," Allen said, adding that now someone is "always overwatching our forces."

Allen issued a directive "to get every single troop in the war zone to read it and think" — and to emphasize that troops should be aware of their surroundings as they go about their jobs, the military official said.

Allen issued a directive ordering troops to have at least one armed soldier on watch at all times, including during exercise, sleep and work.

“It is being prudent, that’s all,” NBC News reported a senior defense official as saying. The source added that these measures were ordered by the commander of NATO International Security Assistance Force, and that each regional commander can implement the orders as they see appropriate.

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube, as well as The Associated Press, contributed to this report.

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