Suspected U.S. missile kills 10 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD -- A suspected U.S. drone fired a barrage of missiles into a Taliban training camp Wednesday, killing 10 insurgents in the second such strike in the South Waziristan tribal region in 24 hours, intelligence officials said. South Waziristan lies close to the Afghan border and is the stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Pakistan's military is also bombing and firing mortars at militant targets in the region, saying it is softening up Mehsud's fighters before launching a ground offensive there to eliminate him.

Mehsud is blamed for most of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in nuclear-armed Pakistan in recent years.

The suspected U.S. drone fired six missiles at the mountaintop training camp in the Karwan Manza area of South Waziristan before dawn Wednesday, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. The nationality and the identity of the slain men were not immediately known.

Independent verification of the casualties and the target was not possible because the region is remote and dangerous. Pakistani and U.S. officials do not give public comment on the strikes.

The attack occurred around 10 miles from the scene of Tuesday's strike, which killed 12 militants, including five foreigners, according to intelligence officials.

There have been at least five suspected American missile attacks in South Waziristan over the last two weeks, an uptick that suggests Washington is also trying to kill or weaken Mehsud and his followers in the run-up to the Pakistani campaign.

Despite the apparent convergence of interests, Pakistan's army insists it is not coordinating with the U.S. It says the American missile attacks are hurting its attempts to kill or capture Mehsud because they alienate local tribesman they are trying to enlist in their campaign against him.

Iraq car bombs kill 16

BAGHDAD -- Car bombs in two Shiite villages on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul killed 16 civilians and injured more than two dozen on Wednesday, authorities said.

The motive for the attacks was not immediately clear. Their strength diminished, some Sunni insurgents still seek to re-ignite sectarian violence with the majority Shiites and reverse Iraq's security gains in the past two years.

Ethnic tensions among Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs are also high in the disputed region; mostly Shiite Turkmen live in the villages that were struck.

One attack happened in the village of Sada Wa Baaweza when a bomb in a car parked near a Shiite mosque killed nine people and injured 15, a police officer and a hospital medic said. Another car bomb killed seven people and injured 11 people on a commercial street in Gubba village, police said.

U.S. strategist helps Afghani challenger

KABUL -- A Democratic Party strategist who helped Bill Clinton get into the White House is now assisting a former Afghan finance minister in his campaign to unseat President Hamid Karzai in upcoming elections.

James Carville said he joined the team of Ashraf Ghani, also a former World Bank official, so Afghans had a viable choice in the Aug. 20 poll.

"This is probably the most important election held in the world in a long time," Carville told The Associated Press in a telephone interview late Tuesday. "This is probably the most interesting project I have ever worked in my life."

President Barack Obama has positioned Afghanistan as the main front in the war against Muslim extremists and the political component of the conflict is moving to center stage. The Obama administration has repeatedly said it does not support any of the 41 presidential candidates, and Carville said he is working as a private citizen.

Nevertheless, the involvement of a strategist with such close ties with the Democratic Party -- and in particular Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan -- is likely to raise questions about Washington's stance.

Karzai is the frontrunner in the presidential race, even though many Afghans and international officials have slammed his performance. U.S. officials have been sharply critical of Karzai's government although they have toned down their rhetoric as the election has approached.

British scientists claim to create human sperm

LONDON -- British scientists claimed Wednesday to have created human sperm from embryonic stem cells for the first time, an accomplishment they say may someday help infertile men father children.

The technique could in 10 years allow researchers to use the basic knowledge of how sperm develop to design treatments to enable infertile men the chance to have biological children, said lead researcher Karim Nayernia, of Newcastle University, whose team earlier produced baby mice from sperm derived in a similar way.

The research, published in the journal Stem Cells and Development, was conducted by scientists at Newcastle and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute.

Stem cells can become any cell in the body, and scientists have previously turned them into a variety of new entities, including cells from the brain, pancreas, heart and blood vessels.

Some experts challenged the research, saying they weren't convinced Nayernia and his colleagues had actually produced sperm cells. Several critics also said the sperm cells they created were clearly abnormal.

"I am unconvinced from the data presented in this paper that the cells produced by Professor Nayernia's group from embryonic stem cells can be accurately called 'spermatazoa," said Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield.

Pacey said in a statement that the sperm created by Nayernia did not have the specific shape, movement and function of real sperm.