Photographs released by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham showed Malala Yousufzai hugging nurses, waving and smiling shyly.

Malala will live with her parents and two brothers in the UK while she continues to receive treatment, but will be admitted again in the next month for another round of surgery to rebuild her skull.

Experts have been optimistic that Malala, who was airlifted from Pakistan in October to receive specialized medical care, has a good chance of recovery because the brains of teenagers are still growing and can better adapt to trauma.

"Malala is a strong young woman and has worked hard with the people caring for her to make excellent progress in her recovery," said Dr. Dave Rosser, the medical director for University Hospitals Birmingham. "Following discussions with Malala and her medical team, we decided that she would benefit from being at home with her parents and two brothers."

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The U.S. did not immediately identify the special operator killed in the mission. News outlets including CNN and NBC reported that the service member was a Navy SEAL.

President Obama praised U.S. special forces on Sunday, saying the mission was characteristic of U.S. troops’ “extraordinary courage, skill and patriotism.”

A spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan said Dr. Dilip Joseph of Colorado Springs, Colo., was rescued early Sunday, local time, in eastern Afghanistan. Joseph, a medical adviser for Colorado Springs-based Morning Star Development, was rescued after intelligence showed he was in imminent danger of injury or possible death, according to the military.

The president praised the fallen service member.

“He gave his life for his fellow Americans, and he and his teammates remind us once more of the selfless service that allows our nation to stay strong, safe and free,” Obama said in a statement.

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The link in question was one that might have given many Facebook users pause. According to an affidavit filed by N. T. Elias, a special agent with the FBI, the video, titled "Dua of Sheikh Muhammad al Mohaisany masjid al haram makkah," appeared "to be a prayer for the success of the mujahideen and features various photos including Al-Qa'ida leaders Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, 9/11 attacks, bloodied adults and children, and Islamic fighters."

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The defendants, including a man who served in the U.S. Air Force, were arrested for plotting to bomb military bases and government facilities, and for planning to engage in "violent jihad," FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said in a release.

A federal complaint unsealed Monday says 34-year-old Sohiel Omar Kabir of Pomona introduced two of the other men to the radical Islamist doctrine of Anwar al-Awlaki, a deceased al-Qaida leader. Kabir served in the Air Force from 2000 to 2001.

The other two - 23-year-old Ralph Deleon of Ontario and 21-year-old Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales of Upland - converted to Islam in 2010 and began engaging with Kabir and others online in discussions about jihad, including posting radical content to Facebook and expressing extremist views in comments.

They later recruited 21-year-old Arifeen David Gojali of Riverside.

Authorities allege that in Skype calls from Afghanistan, Kabir told the trio he would arrange their meetings with terrorists. Kabir added the would-be jihadists could sleep in mosques or the homes of fellow jihadists once they arrived in Afghanistan.

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In the first photographs released by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham since she arrived from Pakistan on Monday, Malala Yousafzai appeared with her eyes open and alert as she lay in a hospital bed.

It was a series of positive developments since the shooting, which was a brazen bid by the Taliban to silence the girl, who has been an outspoken advocate for girls' eduction rights.

Still, doctors said she shows signs of infection and faces a long, difficult recovery with uncertain prospects.

"She is not out of the woods yet," hospital medical director Dr. Dave Rosser said. "Having said that, she's doing very well. In fact, she was standing with some help for the first time this morning when I went in to see her."

He said Malala had agreed to the release of medical information and photos and that she wants to thank people throughout the world for their interest and support in the difficult days since she was gunned down in Pakistan.

He said her bullet wound has become infected.

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Washington is keeping Pakistan, with its collapsing economy and bloated military, afloat but also cripplingly dependent on its handouts and U.S.-sanctioned International Monetary Fund loans.  Meanwhile, CIA drones unilaterally strike its tribal borderlands.  Islamabad returns the favor. It holds Washington hostage over its Afghan War from which the Pentagon won’t be able to exit in an orderly fashion without its help. By blocking U.S. and NATO supply routes into Afghanistan (after a U.S. cross-border air strike had killed 24 Pakistani soldiers) from November 2011 until last July, Islamabad managed to ratchet up the cost of the war while underscoring its indispensability to the Obama administration.

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Fourteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai was shot in the head by the Taliban last week as she was returning home from school in Pakistan. She was airlifted Monday to Britain to receive specialized medical care and protection from follow-up attacks threatened by the militants.

Medical Director Dr. Dave Rosser of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham stressed Tuesday that security was "under control" at the hospital after the overnight incident. He said several people had turned up at the hospital claiming to be the girl's relatives but didn't get very far.

He said the people were arrested, but police said they had only been questioned.

"We don't believe there's any threat to her personal security," Rosser told journalists, explaining the hospital did not believe the suspects were related to Malala. "We think it's probably people being over-curious."

Police would not immediately confirm the details of the incident.

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The attack on 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai as she was returning home from school in Pakistan's northwest a week ago has horrified people across the country and abroad. It has also sparked hope the government would respond by intensifying its fight against the Taliban and their allies.

Malala was targeted by the Taliban for promoting girls' education and criticizing the militant group's behavior when they took over the scenic Swat Valley where she lived. Two of her classmates were also wounded in the attack and are receiving treatment in Pakistan.

The Taliban have threatened to target Malala again until she is killed because she promotes "Western thinking."

Malala was flown out of Pakistan on Monday morning in a specially equipped air ambulance provided by the United Arab Emirates, said the Pakistani military, which has been treating the young girl at one of its hospitals.

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The shooting of Malala Yousufzai along with two classmates while they were on their way home from school Tuesday horrified people in Pakistan and internationally. The shooting has been followed by an outpouring of respect for a girl who earned the enmity of the Taliban for publicizing their acts and speaking about the importance of girls' education.

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying that the girl was promoting "Western thinking."

Providing more details, a Taliban spokesman said the top leadership of the Taliban's Swat Valley chapter decided two months ago to kill Yousufzai in a carefully planned attack after her family ignored repeated warnings.

Police have been questioning people in the town of Mingora, where the shooting took place.

Mingora police chief Afzal Khan Afridi said arrests had been made, but he declined to give any details about the number of people detained or what role they're suspected in having in the shooting. He said he did not want to endanger the ongoing investigation.

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Meanwhile, as the New York Times reported, her attack has provoked anger across Pakistan and the world. The information minister of her province has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of her attackers, while politicians and military leaders have united in condemnation of the shooting. The Times noted:

Some commentators wondered whether the shooting would galvanize public opinion against the Taliban in the same way as a video that aired in 2009, showing a Taliban fighter flogging a teenage girl in Swat, had primed public opinion for a large military offensive against the militants that summer.

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In her BBC blog, Malala wrote about not wearing her uniform to school after officials warned it might attract the Taliban's attention, and how many other students moved out of the valley after the Taliban issued an edict banning girls from school. She wrote about how the Taliban movement had kept her family from going out after sunset.

While chairing a children's assembly supported by UNICEF in the valley last year, the then-13-year-old championed a greater role for young people.

"Girl members play an active role," she said, according to an article on the U.N. organization's website. "We have highlighted important issues concerning children, especially promoting girls' education in Swat."

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A delegation of 32 American women have traveled to Islamabad and will march alongside Pakistani organizers and political groups to South Waziristan -- a nucleus of Taliban militancy regularly struck by U.S. drones. The aim of the trip is to draw greater attention to the harm wrought by drone attacks, while reaching out and building solidarity with Pakistanis on the ground.

"We want to make it known to Pakistanis that there are Americans with a conscience who do care about their lives," Code Pink co-founder and delegation organizer, Medea Benjamin told Salon on the phone from Islamabad.

"We've encountered some overwhelming admiration over the fact that we're here, willing to put ourselves at risk," said Benjamin, who said she has been meeting with human rights groups, women's groups, Pakistani generals, U.S. diplomats and even members of the military spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Islamabad.

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Now, two officers featured in the video, staff sergeants Joseph Chamblin and and Edward Deptola,  will face court martial. Three other junior sergeants also featured (one behind the camera) will face lesser punishment within the military, but not criminal proceedings like Chamblin and Deptola, reported the A.P.

The video, in which one urinating officer grins and says "have a good day, buddy," to the corpse beneath him, is among a string of perturbing incidents perpetrated by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The A.P. notes:

American troops have been caught up in controversies over burning Muslim holy books, posing for photos with insurgents' bloodied remains and an alleged massacre of 16 Afghan villagers by a soldier now in U.S. confinement. The Marine Corps said the urination took place during a counterinsurgency operation in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province on July 27, 2011.

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"I don't want to see it again. It's been through a lot," Randle said of the 19-ton (17-metric ton) vehicle that was his ride — and sometimes his bed — during a six-month deployment to volatile Kandahar province.

"It protected us, but I'm just in a hurry to turn it in to be closer to going home," said Randle, who has now left Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's drawdown of 33,000 U.S. troops by Sept. 30. The pullout — 10,000 last year and 23,000 more this year — will be finished within days. That will leave 68,000 American troops in this country to fight militants and help prepare Afghan forces to take over security nationwide.

While some service members go home, others are busy preparing thousands of vehicles and other equipment for shipment. It's a laborious task that's more difficult than it was in Iraq because of landlocked Afghanistan's tough mountainous terrain, lack of roads and its mountain passes that will soon be covered with snow.

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What he said: The crux of Obama's speech was that what needed to be achieved in Afghanistan by the war has been achieved: The "tide of war is receding," he announced. As the New York Times notes, however, some analysts believe that the withdrawal plan in fact indicates that "the administration may have concluded it can no longer achieve its loftiest ambitions there."

Just over one third of the 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan will be brought back within 15 months (some 10,000 will leave this year with another 23,000 returnng just in time for the election). The draw-down, which will take a number of years, is still more rapid than his military commanders have advised (General David Petraeus, just named CIA chief, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have both publicy endorsed slow withdrawals. Obama mentioned neither Gates nor Petraeus in his speech).

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The brazen attack in the heart of Kabul's government district provided a sharp counterpoint to Karzai's announcement that the U.S. and Afghan government are in talks with the Taliban, the first official confirmation of such discussions. The violence also underscored the difficulty facing any possible negotiated settlement to the decade-long war.

Three men dressed in Afghan army uniforms stormed the police station near the presidential palace and opened fire on officers, said Mohammed Honayon, a witness. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that one of the attackers detonated a suicide bomb vest outside the gates while the others rushed in and began shooting.

The crackle of gunfire echoed through the streets typically bustling with shoppers and government employees on a Saturday, the start of Afghanistan's work week. The fighting ended by 3 p.m. when security forces shot dead the two other attackers. Three police officers, one intelligence agent and five civilians were killed in the attack, the Interior Ministry said.

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"This is absolutely wrong. It's only propaganda and we completely deny these rumors," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in a phone call. "He is inside Afghanistan and he is busy directing military operations with his commanders."

There has been much speculation that the U.S. might ramp up efforts to kill or capture the reclusive, one-eyed Taliban leader after the successful strike against Osama bin Laden. President Barack Obama has said he would order another covert military raid if it was necessary to stop terrorist attacks.

Attacks have increased in Afghanistan since bin Laden's death and since the start of the Taliban's yearly spring offensive. On Monday, four NATO service members were killed in an explosion in the east, NATO said in a statement. The military alliance did not provide details on the attack or the nationalities of the dead.

Most of those with knowledge of the Taliban organization say Omar is hiding in southern Pakistan, around Quetta or Karachi.

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The U.S. Attorney's office in Miami announced Saturday the arrests of Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan and sons Irfan Khan and Izhar Khan. Hafiz Khan is the imam at Miami Mosque, also known as Flagler Mosque, and Izhar Khan is the imam at Jamaat Al-Mumineen Mosque in nearby Margate. Officials say the mosques are not suspected of wrongdoing.

Authorities say they have recorded conversations in which Hafiz Khan supported violence perpetrated by the Pakistani Taliban.

If convicted, the men face 15 years in prison for each of the four counts.

Attempts to reach the men, their attorneys and their mosques were unsuccessful.

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