KABUL, Afghanistan – The International Committee of the Red Cross has established contact with the armed group that kidnapped four of its workers but no progress has been made, officials said Friday.

As of Friday, Sept. 28, 2007, at least 375 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Sept. 22, 2007.

Undersecretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Javad Vaeedi rejected reports about the existence of a secret nuclear center in his country as baseless.