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BY: Declan Walsh | The Guardian
As part of its huge assault on the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, Pakistan's army has struck controversial agreements with four Islamist outfits – Taliban in all but name – to boost its chances of crushing the main Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group.
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BY: Laura King | Los Angeles Times
As the Obama administration moves into a crucial phase of deliberations over the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, residents of a widening arc of territory a half-day's drive from the capital, Kabul, describe daily lives fraught with danger as the militants' foothold becomes stronger.
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BY: Neil MacFarquhar | The New York Times
Scientists and development experts across the globe are racing to increase food production by 50 percent over the next two decades to feed the world’s growing population, yet many doubt their chances despite a broad consensus that enough land, water and expertise exist.
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BY: Mohammed Al-Qadhi | The National
The international community needs to take a coherent and concerted approach towards Yemen’s unfolding conflict, political analysts and researchers say. With no end in sight as the latest round in the fierce battle between the army and al Houthi rebels enters its third month, the stability of Yemen and the region is at risk, they say.
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BY: Judith Miller and David Samuels | The Independent
It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries.
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BY: Laith Hammoudi and Jenan Hussein | McClatchy
After three days of long sessions and continuous delays, the Iraqi parliament failed Wednesday to reach agreement on a new election law, asked a little-used national political council to resolve the impasse and adjourned until Sunday.
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BY: David E. Sanger | The New York Times
Iranian negotiators have agreed to a draft deal that would delay the country’s ability to build a nuclear weapon for about a year, buying more time for President Obama to search for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear standoff.
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BY: Rajiv Chandrasekaran | The Washington Post
In this district, the war is being waged in the manner sought by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan: The number of troops went from about 100 to 1,100, and they have been countering the insurgency by focusing on improving security for local people instead of hunting down the Taliban.
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BY: Tristan McConnell | The London Times
A four-year drought has pushed as many as 23 million people to the brink of starvation across East Africa, making it the worst in a decade or more. Close to four million of those at risk are in Kenya, where one person in ten survives on emergency rations.
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BY: Peter Baker | The New York Times
The absolute, solemn, unwavering, inviolable commitment not just to Poland, but to the entire region, was the central message of the vice president’s damage-control tour of Eastern Europe that got under way on Wednesday. Sent to repair the rift in relations after President Obama canceled his predecessor’s antimissile shield in Eastern Europe, Mr. Biden spared little effort to reinforce America’s friendship with the region.
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BY: Vladimir Socor | Eurasis Daily Monitor
President Ilham Aliyev broke two years of silence regarding Turkey’s obstruction of Azerbaijani gas exports westward, while chairing an expanded session of Azerbaijan’s government. Ankara’s stonewalling can cause further delays to the European Union’s Nabucco and Southern Corridor projects, which rely on Azerbaijan as the linchpin country.
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BY: Kurt Bassuener | European Voice
For more than three years, Bosnia and Herzegovina's political situation has been deteriorating. Fears have re-surfaced that the state may violently collapse. The international community, without a strategy for years, has responded irresolutely.
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BY: Christopher Dickey | Newsweek
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's record of intimidating and outfoxing his enemies, rewriting laws to suit himself, and generally leading his public as well as private life in flagrante delicto puts him in a particularly Italian pantheon.
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BY: Neeta Lal | World Politics Review
The controversy caused in Islamabad by the Kerry-Lugar Bill, which authorizes an annual grant of $1.5 billion to Pakistan for military and non-military purposes over the next five years, is by now well-known. But because of its implications for the entire South Asian region, the bill has also been greeted with alarm in India.
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BY: Jon Pomfret and Blaine Harden | The Washington Post
Worried about a new direction in Japan's foreign policy, the Obama administration warned the Tokyo government Wednesday of serious consequences if it reneges on a military realignment plan formulated to deal with a rising China.
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Asia Sentinel
Petronas, Malaysia's state-owned energy company, appears to have caved in to Thai and Japanese interests over a contract to build a platform worth up to US$190 million to compress gas in Burma's Yetagon field, freezing out the Indian energy giant Larsen & Toubro.
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The Economist
Several days into an offensive launched by the Pakistani armed forces in the tribal area of South Waziristan the consequences are being felt across the country.
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BY: Bibhudatta Pradhan | Bloomberg News
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ruling Congress Party took strong leads in three state polls as votes were counted, extending a winning streak that saw it grab the biggest general election victory in two decades.
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BY: Andrew Downie | Time
Just two weeks ago, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said between delirious sobs in Copenhagen that the International Olympic Committee's decision to award the 2016 Olympic Games to Rio de Janeiro was a vindication of Brazil's social and economic advances. But the elephant in the room was the precarious security situation in the once great city, now fallen into decay, and that elephant made its presence felt.