Al-Qaeda

Pakistan appear to be sliding into a mix of political and ethnic violence a little bit more every day and as violent protests have gripped the country's largest city for the fourth straight day, on Friday police and paramilitary troops were given orders to shoot suspected assailants on sight.

The US has warned airlines of a potential threat from militants surgically implanting explosives.The Department of Homeland Security recently issued a memo to security officials and foreign counterparts alerting them to the threat of "body packing".

Al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate claimed responsibility for two separate attacks in Iraq which killed at least 30 people in June, a group that monitors insurgent communications said.

Mr Brian Johnson-Thomas, a former arms trafficking expert for the UN Security Council incriminatory comments were made on the TV channel Russia Today and came after the Libyan army said it had intercepted 100 Belgian-made FN assault rifles, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition of the same calibre used in the guns, allegedly coming from Qatar.

Pakistan has expelled a team of at least 18 military advisers and trainers sent to help with the fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, as the fallout from the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden continues to rock relations between Islamabad and its western allies.

As the U.S. looks ahead to its phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, even more attention is being directed toward Pakistan, where Obama administration officials say al-Qaeda and its allies are still plotting attacks against the West.

A spokesman says the opposition insists that the strongman cannot be involved in any future government, but it may allow him to live out his last years in Libya at an isolated location.

President Obama has ordered 33,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in the next 14 months with 10,000 to be withdrawn by the end of this year. The timetable settled on by the president after a vigorous internal review was faster than sought by some top military commanders but much slower than demanded by many domestic political critics.

Dozens of militants, many of them suspected al Qaeda members, have today escaped a Yemeni prison located in the south-eastern province of Hadramout, by using a tunnel they dug over the past months in what appeared to be a brazen, coordinated jailbreak, according to reports.

Four months into the conflict and while the battle for Libya is still going strong, various conspiracy theories have by now emerged. After Gaddafi's own theory of Al-Qaeda putting drugs in the people's Nescafe flopped, the idea that Libya could in fact be the theatre for a new cold war attracted quite a lot of attention.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said publicly for the first time on Saturday that the United States and the Nato-led coalition have been actively negotiating with the Taliban, an assertion that was yesterday confirmed by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

A man was taken into custody early Friday in connection with an investigation into a suspicious vehicle near the Pentagon, U.S authorities confirmed.

The long-serving second-in-command of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been appointed its head following the death of Osama Bin Laden, the militant organisation said in a statement.

Pakistan's top spy agency has arrested five Pakistani informants who assisted the CIA ahead of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, armed men stormed the provincial council in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, killing at least eight people in the latest assault on government buildings in Sunni parts of Iraq.

Al Quaeda's second in command yesterday issued a eulogy for Osama Bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid in Pakistan on May 2. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is tipped to become the terrorist organisation's next leader, had already been perceived by western powers to be Al Qaeda's real operational head for a long time.

Although the transitional council headed by Gaddafi's former Justice Minister has in the space of just under four months made a lot of new friends and with the coalition forces now backing it and countries such as China and Russia slowly opening up to it as well, the would be sucessor to Gaddafi has still made quite a few enemies in the African continent itself. While the African Union is becoming more vocal on the need for Gaddafi to step out of power, tensions between several African govern...

The problems with intra-national conflicts are often that in order to fully understand the set of complex dynamics and circumstances that come into play, far information than what is reported in and provided by the mainstream media is needed. In Libya problems did not surface just three months ago and despite being crushed, opponents of the Gaddafi regime existed before the uprising so is it really justifiable for Mustapha Abdul Jalil, the former Gaddafi Justice Minister to now be the head of th...

The British government is to publish an updated strategy for tackling extremism and terrorism, on Tuesday afternoon.

As Yemen is facing rapid and unprecedented changes, the country that was a year ago accused of being a haven for terrorism is not the number one priority of the U.S and the West anymore. So what happened to all the Yemeni Al-Qaeda fighters that are supposed to be in hiding on the country's territory, have they fled to Libya?The slowness and reluctance of the International community to confront the fragile political situation in Yemen should make us question the efforts that were made to p...

Libya's official opposition movement, the Transitional National Council (TNC), was formed rapidly as it was officially established only a week after the initial uprising began in Benghazi. The group is headed by Mustafa Abdul Jalil. The council was created to provide a structural and organised base for the rebel movement on the ground. However most of its most important positions are filled with regime defectors, not by people from the opposition.

Bernard Henri Levy announced that he delivered a message on Thursday from Libyan rebel leaders to Israel's Prime Minister, saying they would seek diplomatic ties with the country if they came to power.

After UN Resolution 1973 was passed, coalition leaders promised "better days ahead for Libya" and pledged to "continue to act to help protect the Libyan people from the brutality of Gaddafi's regime" as well as to " support and stand by them as they seek to take control of their own destiny."

Barack Obama had quite a journey last week, but he was not the only person making international headlines. Here's a quick reminder of what was a busy week in international politics.

Commenting on Pakistan last Friday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Pakistan had failed to grasp just how much more it must do to quash Islamist militancy. Today, Mrs Clinton arrived in Islamabad, a visit that was unannounced amid, intensifying speculation about the status of the relationship between the US and Tripoli since the killing of Osama bin Laden.Clinton and U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen were due to meet President Asif Ali Zardari as well as Army chief...

After bilateral talks and a much talked about barbecue, both held at Ten Downing Street, Barack Obama continued his three-day state visit to the United Kingdom with a joint press conference where he and British Prime Minister David Cameron answered questions posed by the press.

After Obama's Middle East speech last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly drafted an official statement that was a first response to the U.S. President's demand to consider the 1967 border proposal as a starting point for negotiation. The tone was clear and firm, with Mr Netanyahu insisting on a common point Israel shares with the U.S.: national security is what is primordially leading the country's foreign policy.

Relief could be felt and hope expressed after the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced that he was willing to sign a transition deal. However, on Wednesday and despite Washington's insistence on the necessity of a deal being signed so Yemen could "move forward immediately" with political reform, the agreement fell through. It seems that unhappy about certain details, the Yemeni president backed out of a deal that would have granted him immunity from prosecution and allowed him...

A recording allegedly made by former Al-Qaeda number one Osama Bin Laden shortly before he died has been released. The 12 minute long message sees him praise the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and speak of a "rare historic opportunity" for Muslims to rise up against the "tyrants". He repeatedly refers to and encourages the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt but does not mention Bahrain, Syria, Libya or even Yemen.

Last week, the Daily Telegraph revealed that David Cameron has ordered British commanders to draw up plans to start pulling hundreds of British troops out of Afghanistan within weeks, triggering a row with military chiefs who do not approve of the Prime Minister's new strategy.