NATO said Thursday that the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan is being won, despite reports by other agencies of a sharp upsurge in insurgent attacks this year. "While numerous challenges remain, there are some basic facts that highlight the improved security across the country," said US General Joseph Dunford, head of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Dunford said in a statement that almost eight million children are in school, 40 percent of whom are girls, compared with one million -- almost all boys -- under the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule.

By Mirwais Harooni KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has agreed with a call from the country's conservative religious council for a crackdown on television stations, calling some of their programmes "immoral and un-Islamic", officials said on Tuesday. The decision by Karzai may alarm some of Afghanistan's international backers, who have invested heavily through 12 years of war in promoting liberal values and freedom of expression in Afghanistan's deeply conservative society.

Afghan village elders were locked in talks with the Taliban on Tuesday in a bid to free 10 foreign and one Afghan hostage being held captive by the militia for a third day, officials said. The Taliban, who are fighting an 11-year insurgency against US-led NATO troops and the Afghan government, said earlier the captives were in good health and had been moved to a "safe area".

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban have captured all aboard a helicopter that crashed in a volatile region of Afghanistan's east, a spokesman for the insurgency said on Monday. The helicopter, owned by air charter company Khorasan Cargo Airlines, made an emergency landing in Logar province late on Sunday due to bad weather, a Khorasan staff member said on condition of anonymity.