Pakistan

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.

A British serviceman has gone missing in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has revealed.Following the soldier's disappearance from his base in southern Afghanistan early this morning, a massive search has been launched, amid claims that he was killed in Taliban custody. It is understood that the search is being carried out both on the ground and from the air, as troops desperately try to find him.

The remarkable weather extremes of the past decade, including this year's Queensland and Victorian floods, were not caused by global warming, according to one of Australia's most eminent climate scientists.

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.

While LulzSec continues its Operation Anti-Security campaign against the world, rival group Team Poison has issued a statement promising to unmask LulzSec's members.

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.

Aiming to convince senators of the viability of the Barack Obama administration's Afghanistan policy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday cited South Korea as a successful "investment" case. "You look at the decades of our investment in South Korea," she said, facing a barrage of questions in a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee aimed at clarifying Washington's policy and progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dutch Freedom Party Leader Geert Wilders was acquitted by a court of charges that he made remarks defaming Muslims, ending a three-year prosecution that he described as a bid to restrict his freedom of speech.

President Obama has ordered 33,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in the next 14 months with 10,000 to be withdrawn by the end of this year.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.

The number of forcibly displaced people around the world has reached a 15-year high, according to the UN high commission for refugees (UNHCR), with the vast majority languishing in poor countries ill-equipped to cater to their needs.

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.

Following the renewed international interest regarding the Sri Lankan civil war after the broadcast of "Sri Lanka Killing Field" on Channel 4, Ban Ki-Moon has suggested that he can only establish an international investigation if the Sri Lankan government consents, which seems highly unlikely.

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.

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.

South Korea's Ban Ki-moon said he will run for a second five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations."It has been an enormous privilege to lead this great organization," Ban, 66, said yesterday at a news conference at UN headquarters in New York. "If supported by the member states, I would be deeply honoured to serve once more."Ban said he expressed his intention in a letter to the governments of the 192 UN member nations and would meet with their envoys with...

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."

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.

In 2009 Obama went on his first official visit to Europe with a planned In 2009 ObamaIa five-nation tour in which he was said to be determined to tackle almost every global problem. He came out of the G20 as victorious as he managed to broker a deal a deal at the G20 summit in London, which he has hailed as a "turning point" in the economic crisis. The negotiations were however tough as French PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to walk out from what he said were "false compromises"...

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.

A UK parliament report has questioned whether Osama bin Laden’s death was legal under international law. IBTimes summarises the report here…

A UK parliament report has questioned whether Osama bin Laden’s death was legal under international law.

Greg Mortenson, author of the bestseller "Three Cups of Tea," has been sued for fraud in a class-action case accusing him of fabricating much of his story to promote the book and his Montana-based charity.

The killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces came as something of a surprise to the world and many questions have been raised about the circumstances of his death, but there is little doubt that after this life will be different for both the Obama administration and for Pakistan.

On his visit to Pakistan the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, said that Britain is responsible for many of the world's problems, referencing in particular the ongoing Kashmir dispute.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of planning the 11 September terrorist attacks, which killed over 3,000 people in 2001, is to be tried by a military commission at Guantanamo Bay.

This week the former President and military ruler of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, said he believed that "a good dictatorship is better than a bad democracy".

Forget Britain's "Special Relationship" with America, largely a mirage of the Foreign Office and its existence unknown to most Americans. Even as World War II was ending, the cracks in the relationship between Britain and the United States were becoming ever more obvious to contemporaries and for more recent generations can be studied by reading books, both military and political, such as Armageddon and Nemesis by Max Hastings.

The civil war in Libya, the length and result of which is of course unknown, has shown the USA and the European powers to be sufferers of what Winston Churchill once described as a "disease of the will".