Karzai had said Tuesday that he would send representatives from his High Peace Council to Qatar for talks but aides said he changed his mind after objecting to the way the announcement was handled, in particular the Taliban's use of its formal name "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" in opening an office in Doha.

Shafiullah Nooristani, a member of the High Peace Council, told The Associated Press that the use of the name violated agreements Karzai's government had made with the U.S. and caused diplomatic issues for Afghanistan.

"The agreement was that the office should open only — and only — for negotiations, not as a political entity like a parallel institution to the Afghan Embassy which is already there," Nooristan said.

In an attempt at damage control, Qatar's Foreign Ministry said late Wednesday that the Taliban had violated an agreement with them to call the office the "Political Bureau of the Taliban Afghan in Doha.

The attack comes only six months after the United Nations expanded its presence in Mogadishu, where it had kept only a small operation because Islamic insurgents had controlled much of the capital until being pushed out in an offensive in 2011.

Al-Shabab said on its Twitter feed shortly after the 11:30 a.m. attack began that its fighters "are now in control of the entire compound and the battle is still ongoing."

African Union and Somali security forces responded and took control of the compound by 12:30 p.m. The U.N. staff who sought refuge in the compound's secure bunker then were evacuated to the secure military base and airport complex across the street, said Ben Parker, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia.

Two South Africans from the company Denel Mechem who were doing demining work for the U.N. died in the attack, said Vuyelwa Qinga, a spokeswoman for Denel, a manufacturer of defense equipment.

If the FBI's post-shooting inquiries are time-tested, "their outcomes are also predictable," say Charlie Savage and Michael S. Schmidt in The New York Times. In every single intentional shooting by FBI agents since 1993, the bureau's internal investigations have ruled the shooting as justified, according to interviews and FBI documents The New York Times obtained through a Freedom of Information Act.

It turns out, with rare exception, the FBI launches an inquiry whenever an agent fires a shot in the field. "Critics say the fact that for at least two decades no agent has been disciplined for any instance of deliberately shooting someone raises questions about the credibility of the bureau's internal investigations," say Savage and Schmidt, but FBI defenders say that several factors explain the impressive record, including that FBI agents "tend to be older, more experienced, and better trained than city police officers."

Whatever the reason, here's a look at the FBI's record of shooting Americans between 1993 to 2011, by the numbers:

2,200
Pages of FBI records delivered to The New York Times

58
Incidents covered in those records where gunfire was exchanged

70
Suspects shot and killed by the FBI in that period

80
Suspects shot and wounded by the FBI in that period

100
Percentage of those shootings deemed justified after internal investigations

9
Law enforcement officials killed in the covered incidents

38
Law enforcement officials wounded in the covered incidents

289
Total deliberate FBI shootings covered in the documents, including those that wounded nobody

5
Incidents deemed "bad shoots," or weapons discharges that didn't comply with FBI policy. None of the "bad" shots hit anybody. (Agents are allowed to used deadly force if they fear their lives, or the lives of their colleagues, are in danger.)

$1.3 million
FBI payout to the victim of a 2002 FBI shooting, an innocent 20-year-old the FBI mistook for a bank robber. Even after settling with the victim, the FBI investigators classified the shooting as justifiable.

Source:New York Times

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After a four-year investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the plane, which had just taken off from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, was destroyed by a center fuel tank explosion likely caused by a spark from faulty wiring.

But according to Tom Stalcup, a co-producer of the documentary, the investigators "provide radar and forensic evidence proving that one or more ordinance explosions outside the aircraft caused the crash." The film, will premiere on EPIX on July 17, the 17th anniversary of the crash.

Stalcup said the investigators plan to file petition the NTSB for a new probe.

In response, the NTSB said Wednesday that it would review any petition related to the 1996 crash, which touched off one of the most complex air disaster investigations in U.S. history.

The CIA and FBI conducted a parallel investigation to determine if a bomb or missile had brought down the plane.

Dozens of eyewitnesses in the Long Island area "recalled seeing something resembling a flare or firework ascend and culminate in an explosion," the CIA said in a 2008 report. "Had the crash been the result of state-sponsored terrorism, it would have been considered an act of war":

The CIA responded to the FBI’s request within 24 hours of the crash. This support consisted primarily of help from the Counterterrorist Center in the Directorate of Operations and from a small group of analysts in the Office of Weapons, Technology and Proliferation in the Directorate of Intelligence.

But after an eight-month investigation, the CIA "concluded with confidence and full substantiation that the eyewitnesses had not seen a missile."

"Our analysis demonstrates that the eyewitness sightings of greatest concern to us—the ones originally interpreted to be of a possible missile attack—took place after the first of several explosions aboard the aircraft," the CIA's Deputy Director of Intelligence wrote in a 1997 memo.