Feature – News Updates

By removing General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama may have tried to show that he is not a softie. The sacking of the general followed his inflammatory remarks to the Rolling Stone magazine. In the article headlined 'Runaway General', McChrystal and his aides ridiculed Vice President Joe Biden, called Obama's …

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22, 2010 (IPS) – Defying a challenge by the government of Sri Lanka, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Tuesday named a three-member panel of experts to advise him on how he should proceed with investigating violations of human rights and humanitarian law during the concluding stages of that country's long-drawn-out separatist war last May. "The secretary-general has all …

AMERICA is still embarrassed by the infamous McCarthy Hearings which ruined the lives of thousands of innocents during the Fifties. Anyone then, suspected of being linked to communism was arrested, interrogated and either imprisoned or forced to give names of others suspected of communist tendencies. And so the fear and intimidation spread like a great plague across the USA. Names were …

Russia apparently believes that the longer the US presence in Afghanistan the greater the harm Russia will suffer. It even wonders whether the US is on a mission to destabilize it. Its worries may have increased last Sunday when the New York Times reported that minerals worth one trillion dollars had been discovered in Afghanistan. The report said: "The previously …

  BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – European Union foreign ministers will call on Israel next week to lift a three-year-old blockade of Gaza which they describe as "unacceptable and counterproductive" – including to Israel's security. In a draft statement prepared for a meeting on Monday, the foreign ministers will condemn the use of violence during Israel's operation to stop a flotilla of …

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials. The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like …