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• The show of force comes as Mosul residents vote in local elections that have been marred by intimidation by militants, as in the past. Al-Qaida's muscle-flexing is evident in dollar terms too, with one Iraqi official estimating that militants are netting more than $1 million a month in the city through criminal business enterprises.
• Mosul and the surrounding countryside have emerged as major flashpoints in a wave of bloodshed that has killed nearly 2,000 Iraqis since the start of April -- the country's deadliest outbreak of violence in five years. Gunbattles have broken out between militants and security forces, and several candidates have been assassinated.
• Just since the start of last week, attackers in and around the city have unleashed a rapid-fire wave of five car bombs, tried to assassinate the provincial governor and killed another local politician and four other people in a suicide bombing.
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• FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHINWAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- The young Afghan soldier lay in great pain on a cot at an army base, his uniform pants cut up to his thigh so medics could clean the wound in his right knee where he was shot fighting insurgents.
• The medics bandaged him and gave him morphine and an IV bag of fluids. But they couldn't stitch up the wound or give further care because there's no medical doctor at the base in the eastern province of Nangarhar. The base's two-room medical facility is run by a dentist, and its nine medics have only basic medical training. The wounded soldier had to wait overnight in the clinic until it was safer to drive him about 50 kilometers (31 miles) to a more sophisticated medical facility in Jalalabad.
• The Afghan National Army faces a shortage of doctors, even as the number of wounded soldiers soars during a fierce wave of Taliban attacks. While the U.S.-led military coalition has praised the Afghan security forces' rapid growth and improving skills, its military medical program hasn't kept pace.
• The Afghan National Army has only 632 medical doctors -- 72 short of its goal -- to care for about 177,000 soldiers nationwide. At the same time, its clinics are having equipment, supply and logistical problems.
• The result is bottlenecks at the field clinics, where wounded soldiers can wait hours or days to be transferred to a hospital. Such delays can increase the risk of medical problems and lengthen the time it takes to recover.

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