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BY: Mark Magnier | Los Angeles Times
New Delhi is objecting to Chinese projects in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir after Beijing protested a visit by India's premier to Arunachal Pradesh state, portions of which China claims.
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BY: Salman Masood | The New York Times
Gunmen launched a daring series of attacks on two police training centers and engaged in a gun battle with officers at a regional office of the Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore on Thursday morning, police and government officials said.
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BY: Howard Schneider | The Washington Post
A political crisis for the Palestinian Authority and growing doubts about American mediation have deeply undercut chances that Israeli-Palestinian peace talks will resume in the near future, according to officials and analysts on both sides.
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BY: Mitchell Prothero | The National
After the second mysterious explosion since July levelled a Hizbollah member’s home, Israel has formally complained to the United Nations that the militia continues to maintain weapons stockpiles south of the Litani River, along the Israel-Lebanon border, in defiance of the ceasefire that ended the July 2006 war.
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BY: Jane Arraf | The Christian Science Monitor
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Wednesday he's optimistic that a UN investigator would examine claims that Syria, Iran, and others were interfering in Iraq's affairs.
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BY: Cathrin Schaer | Der Spiegel
Young Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor is seeking political asylum in Germany after showing a film critical of the Tehran regime at a film festival. Kalhor, whose father is one of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's top advisers, says she will be seized by the secret police if she returns home.
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BY: Michael Slackman | The New York Times
The analysts cite a confluence of factors, from Iran’s internal political crisis to the change in leadership in Washington, and one overriding point: Iran’s leadership may have achieved much of what it set out to accomplish when it stepped up its clandestine nuclear program in 1999.
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BY: Karin Bruillard | The Washington Post
Abdullah Abdullah stood before a roomful of supporters at a hotel here last week, slamming the failings of the Afghan government like a man still on the campaign trail -- which, the presidential candidate insists, he is.
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BY: Celia W. Dugger | The New York Times
Roy Bennett, a leader of the political party that long fought Zimbabwe’s president but now shares power with him, was sent back to prison on Wednesday in the eastern city of Mutare and formally indicted on terrorism charges.
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BY: Honor Mahony | EU Observer
The European Commission on Wednesday (14 October) issued a series of assessments of countries hoping to join the EU and said enlargement should not be made a "scapegoat" of Europe's current economic problems.
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BY: David L. Stern | Global Post
For both countries, full relations would deliver significant benefits. Armenia is a tiny, land-locked nation, suffering heavily from the world economic downturn. Its two international borders, with Georgia and Iran, provide some trade, but the country is for the most part economically isolated. With an open border, the 77 million-strong Turkish market would open up.
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BY: Mark Landler | The New York Times
On a day that took her from an elite Moscow university to this bustling city in Russia’s Muslim hinterland, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton paid tribute on Wednesday to religious tolerance, while also challenging Russia’s leaders to open their political system and allow more dissent.
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BY: Vladimir Socor | Eurasia Daily Monitor
With Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s direct backing, Gazprom and other Russian energy companies have embarked upon an effort to co-opt Croatia into their projects, including a fanciful South Stream gas transport project. Putin has personally offered a package of energy projects to Croatia’s Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor and President Stipe Mesic during informal meetings abroad.
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BY: Alisher Khamidov | Eurasianet
What’s more valuable in Central Asia, natural gas or water? Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan may soon find out. A recent Uzbek move to cut gas supplies has many Kyrgyz worrying about how to stay warm this winter. But experts say the gas cut-off may end up being counterproductive for Tashkent because it will encourage Kyrgyzstan to develop its hydro-power generating capacity. That would be a development which potentially causes a significant reduction in the volume of water flowing into Uzbekistan.
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BY: Jon B. Alterman | World Politics Review
On Iran, China increasingly seems to be the odd man out. Not only have the French taken a surprisingly hard line in international efforts to regulate the Iranian nuclear program, but there are signs that Russia may be stiffening its resolve as well. China, by contrast, seems invariably to caution patience. Meanwhile, Chinese firms are expanding into the Iranian market at the same time that many international actors are leaving.
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BY: Blaine Harden | The Washington Post
There have been hiccups, such as the five missiles it fired into the sea on Monday, but North Korea seems unusually focused this fall on smoothing feathers that it ruffled earlier in the year.
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BY: Eli Lake | The Washington Times
A key al Qaeda military planner thought dead by the United States and Pakistan gave an interview this week to a Pakistani reporter, illustrating the uncertainties of a military strategy based on air strikes by unmanned drones.
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BY: Willy Lam | Asia Sentinel
Now we know what Vice-President Xi Jinping must have felt when he failed to make it to the Chinese Communist Party's Central Military Commission at a plenary session of the Central Committee last month. The supposed front-runner to succeed Party Chief and President Hu Jintao apparently blamed the supremo for not inducting him into the policy-setting military commission, which has been headed by Hu since 2004.
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BY: Kaisa Schreck | ISN Security Watch
In Southeast Asia, an often ignored corner of the Islamic world, Islamic politics have embodied the complex interplay among cultural, ethnic, religious and political forces unique to the region. Islam, as a relative latecomer to the island world of Asia, only spread to significant parts of the local population in the 12th century.
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BY: Tim Rogers | The Christian Science Monitor
Daniel Ortega's opaque business dealings, linked to Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, are blurring the lines between party, state, and first family, say critics.