Nearly 2,000 people crossed into Egypt from the Gaza Strip and 882 Palestinians stranded in Egypt since the border closed were finally able to return home as Egypt allowed the Rafah crossing to open for 48 hours as a “goodwill gesture” in advance of Ramadan.
Gaza has been under a nearly complete lockdown since Hamas seized [...]
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev defended last week’s decree recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia ahead of tomorrow’s emergency EU summit on the Georgian conflict. Reports abound that several EU member nations are pressing for harsh sanctions against Russia. President Medvedev warned of retaliation against any hostile actions taken at the summit, and suggested [...]
NATO spokesman Brigadier General Richard Blanchette announced a joint probe between coalition forces, the Afghan government and the United Nations into a Herat air-strike earlier this month that stands as one of the largest incidents of US-inflicted civilian casualties since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. He hoped the investigation would allow the sides to reconcile [...]
Updated 8/30 8:45 PM EST
Less than a week after losing their largest coalition partner the Pakistani Peoples Party’s internal stability has been called into question, amid reports that acting party leader and presumptive future President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari has purged many of assassinated former leader Benazir Bhutto’s closest allies from the upper ranks [...]
Relief agencies fear that their workers could be put in jeopardy by what they call the “militarization” of humanitarian operations in Georgia. In making the effort a military operation, they fear the line will be blurred between military and civilian aid, and that civilian aid workers may be mistaken for soldiers.
Brigadier General Jon Miller, the [...]
In a meet unusual for its high level of secrecy, Admiral Mike Mullen and General David Petraeus met with the head of Pakistan’s military, General Ashfaq Kayani, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. The meeting focused primarily on the increased fighting along the Afghan-Pakistan border, and the increasing problem of militant infiltration back and [...]
The US State Department cautioned against getting “overly excited” about the recent increase in tensions with North Korea. Yesterday, North Korea announced that it had suspended disabling its nuclear program two weeks ago, and threatened to renew its nuclear weapons program.
The announcement came as something of a shock since just two days before, the same [...]
Last Updated 8/28 3:50 PM EST
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the European Union would consider sanctions against Russia along with other unspecified measures during a meeting to be held on the Georgian crisis Monday, at the behest of as-yet unnamed EU member nations. He also was reported to have expressed fears that Russia had [...]
Last Updated 8/28 12:35 PM EST
Around 150 militants were reported killed in a surge of violence on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
On the Afghan side of the border, 40 Taliban were reported killed in airstrikes after attacking government-run checkpoints in Paktika, not far from Waziristan. Further west, in southern Helmand province, another 18 Taliban [...]
The United States’ early proposal would have kept troops within Iraq to 2015, says Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, while the Iraqi government had originally sought a date of 2010. The date is reportedly fixed at 2011, though President Talabani says that the Iraqi government would retain to option to extend the presence of the troops [...]
