Feature – News Updates

House rejects pullout from Afghanistan, By Reuters /Ahmad Masood

Two helicopters escorting U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates take off after a visit to Camp Black Horse where the Afghan National Army (ANA) receive training in Kabul March 10, 2010. The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected a measure calling for President Barack Obama to pull U.S. forces from Afghanistan, in an election-year test of his decision to …

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Survey finds world’s top 10 intellectuals are Muslims

US international affairs journal Foreign Policy says Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen voted top of its list of world intellectuals. WASHINGTON – The bimonthly US international affairs journal Foreign Policy has just published a survey of the world’s top 20 public intellectuals and the first 10 are all Muslims. Fethullah Gülen, who heads a network of schools and media that is probably …

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Paris closer to hosting Islamic bond issue

PARIS: France is set to adjust its legal and fiscal framework to accommodate Islamic bonds this year, a leading Paris official said, as the French capital looks to attract business in this potentially fast-growing industry. “Work is well advanced on the matter of hosting sukuk (Islamic bond) emissions,” Paris Europlace managing director Arnaud de Bresson said in an interview. Paris …

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“This Time We Went Too Far”, By Norman Finkelstein

Truth and Consequences in the Gaza Invasion Public outrage at the Gaza invasion did not come out of the blue but rather marked the nadir of a curve plotting a steady decline in support for Israel. As polling data of Americans and Europeans, both Gentiles and Jews, suggest, the public has become increasingly critical of Israeli policy over the past …

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Blackwater’s Youngest Victim, by JEREMY SCAHILL

Every detail of September 16, 2007, is burned in Mohammed Kinani’s memory. Shortly after 9 am he was preparing to leave his house for work at his family’s auto parts business in Baghdad when he got a call from his sister, Jenan, who asked him to pick her and her children up across town and bring them back to his home …

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Troop surge ‘supports peace deal’, By Gareth Porter

KABUL – General Stanley McChrystal’s cautiously worded support for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban leadership is only the first public signal of a policy decision by the Barack Obama administration to support a political settlement between the Karzai regime and the Taliban, an official of the McChrystal’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) command has revealed in an interview with …

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