As the last of 30,000 U.S. reinforcements arrive in Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday got a firsthand look at operations in the dangerous south where Afghan and international troops are ramping up security.

Gates traveled to Kandahar province, a region where U.S., Afghan and NATO forces are trying to rout insurgents from their strongholds and bolster governance. The Taliban are fighting back, waging a fear and intimidation campaign to keep local Afghans from siding with international forces and the Afghan government.

“You guys are in the forward foxhole and what makes a difference in the whole campaign is your success here in Kandahar city,” Gates told U.S. troops at Camp Nathan Smith, headquarters for U.S. operations in the largest city in southern Afghanistan.

Soldiers killed at least 25 suspected cartel members Thursday in a raid and gunbattle in a Mexican state near the U.S. border that has become one of the most dangerous battlegrounds in the country’s drug war.

A military aircraft flying over Ciudad Mier in Tamaulipas state spotted several gunmen in front of a building, according to a statement from Mexico’s Defense Department.

When ground troops moved in, gunmen opened fire, starting a gunbattle in which 25 suspected cartel members died, according to the military. The statement said two soldiers were wounded.

Authorities rescued three people believed to be kidnap victims in the raid, according to the statement. The military said troops seized 25 rifles, four grenades, 4,200 rounds of ammunition and 23 vehicles.

The bearded young cleric yells at a young woman for lifting her traditional veil from her face while speaking to him on the street, and rants against Egyptians who adopt Western lifestyles and values. His followers beat up an opponent.

That is the image of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood depicted in a TV miniseries airing in Egypt that casts a harsh light on the country’s largest opposition movement just three months before a crucial parliamentary election that is expected to pit it against President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party.

Supporters accuse the government of using the show as a propaganda tool to demonize the fundamentalist group by portraying it as a collection of fanatics battling secular-minded and Western-oriented Egyptians and trying to turn Egypt into an Islamic society.

Dolphins have been herded into a cove as part of an annual hunt in the Japanese seaside town made famous by an Oscar-winning documentary about their slaughter, conservationist group Sea Shepherd said Friday. A town official said none were killed.

The dolphin hunt at Taiji, documented in “The Cove,” begins Sept. 1 every year. The boats returned empty Wednesday. But on Thursday, some dolphins were corralled into the inlet, according to anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd and a fishing official in Taiji.

The official in charge of media queries at the Taiji fishing organization said a handful of dolphins were kept for aquariums, but the rest were set free Friday morning. He declined to give details.

The government looked to put recent controversies behind them on Friday as Prime Minister David Cameron backed his foreign secretary William Hague following an aide’s resignation over “malicious” rumours that they had an inappropriate relationship.

Hague on Wednesday issued a deeply personal statement about his wife’s miscarriages and their difficulties in having children as he denied having a homosexual affair with his advisor Christopher Myers, 25.

“We have always given William our 100 percent support,” said a spokeswoman for Cameron.

“The prime minister totally understands why William made the statement he did and he backs him 100 percent.”

At a London press conference with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Thursday attended by a scrum of photographers, Hague brushed off repeated questions about the issue.

“I made a very personal statement, which was not an easy thing to do. I am not going to expand on that,” he said.

“My wife and I really felt we had had enough of the circulation of untrue allegations, particularly on the Internet, and at some point you have to speak out about it and put the record straight.”

Hague, 49, said Wednesday that the speculation stemmed from the fact that he and Myers, who had worked for him for 18 months, had shared hotel rooms.

They were also relaxed pictures of them casually dressed taking a stroll.

Myers has quit his post, with Hague saying Thursday the advisor was “rather fed up of the political world, and who can blame him?”.

Hague insisted the work of his department had not “missed a beat” despite the furore.

Hague’s judgement has been brought into question on the issue, including over their sharing of rooms, his appointment of an extra advisor in a time of government cutbacks, and the statement on his private life.

Public relations guru Max Clifford said Hague had got it completely wrong, having “taken a small problem and turned it into a huge problem”.

In his memoirs released Wednesday, former prime minister Tony Blair said he defined Hague as “better at jokes than judgement”.

On the domestic stage, Blair was regularly given the runaround by him between 1997 and 2001 when Hague was the opposition leader.

“He was a truly outstanding debater, he had a good mind and a high-grade intellect,” he wrote.

“In different circumstances and at a different time, he could have been — and very possibly may still be — a great leader and even prime minister.

“He was formidable.”

Britain’s new governing Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has been dogged by personal scandals since taking office in May.

Last week, prisons minister Crispin Blunt announced he had “decided to come to terms with his homosexuality” and had separated from his wife.

Meanwhile number two finance minister David Laws quit in May after admitting failing to disclose that he claimed back rent he paid to his boyfriend because he wanted to keep his homosexuality secret.

A website supporting Iran’s reform movement says assailants have attacked the home of an opposition leader and wounded one of his bodyguards.

The report says Mahdi Karroubi’s guards had to fire in the air after the crowd broke down the door of the home on Thursday night after days of gatherings outside.

The Sahamnews website says the attackers were members of the plainclothes pro-government militia that has led the crackdown on Iran’s opposition since the disputed June 2009 presidential election.

The website reports that the attackers beat one of Karroubi’s guards unconscious and he had to be hospitalized.

Karroubi was one of the pro-reform candidates who ran against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

An Australian man was attacked by a shark which mauled his face and neck during a holiday in the South Pacific Solomon Islands, officials said on Friday.

The man, identified by media as 34-year-old Benjamin D’Emden of Sydney, is in stable condition in hospital in the country’s capital Honiara, a foreign affairs spokesman said.

Reports said D’Emden was swimming when the shark attacked him from below, biting into his face and leaving him with severe cuts. Doctors were hoping to fly him back to Australia for emergency treatment, the Daily Telegraph said.

South Korea and the United States will hold joint anti-submarine exercises in another show of force against North Korea, officials said Friday, as Pyongyang renewed threats against the drills.

The exercises will be the second in a series of joint maneuvers the allies planned to conduct in response to the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March that they blame on the North. The two sides staged large-scale joint naval drills in July followed by South Korea’s own naval drills last month.

The drills, set to run from Sunday through Thursday off the Korean peninsula’s west coast, will involve about 17,000 U.S. and South Korean troops, seven ships and two submarines as well as aircraft, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. military in Seoul.

The last ferries pulled away from North Carolina’s vulnerable barrier islands Thursday as Hurricane Earl spun closer with winds near 125 mph, putting the East Coast all the way to Canada on alert for what could be a blustery Labor Day weekend.

A hurricane warning was issued for the tip of Massachusetts, including Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. New hurricane and tropical storm warnings and watches were issued for parts of Canada, adding to those already in effect from North Carolina to near the Canadian border.

With winds expected to whip up in North Carolina’s Outer Banks by Thursday evening, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate said residents and tourists could no longer afford to wait on the next forecast to see how close the eye of the storm might get.