The Times (London)

According to an analysis of public reports by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think-tank, 82 US drone attack in Pakistan since 2006 have killed between 750 and 1,000 – though up to 320 of those were civilians. ... Original Aritcle

“The Iran election seriously complicates Obama's game plan in the region,” said Steven Clemons, of the New America Foundation, a left-of-centre Washington think tank. “But if Ahmadinejad is sworn in and the situation gets relatively stable, ...

Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert at the New America Foundation in Washington, said that the furore over the case and similar ones would prove politically sticky for the Obama Administration as it sought to fulfil the promise to close Guantánamo. ...

Peter Bergen, an author and al-Qaeda expert, interviewed one of bin Laden’s bodyguards, who told him that the terrorist leader had given him two bullets to ...

The attack on the Marriott hotel is a shocking blow to Pakistan. What is really frightening is that the security measures in place worked: the lorry was stopped by guards at the barrier outside. As I found during visits to the Marriott during my recent stay in Pakistan, they were vigilant and effective.

Given all this, one might ask whether it was worth getting rid of Mr Musharraf. Although he too pursued an alliance with the US, he was at least personally honest, whereas Mr Zardari is widely known as “Mr Ten Per Cent”, because of his behaviour when his wife was Prime Minister in the 1990s.

Before making his speech on policy towards Russia in Kiev, Ukraine, later this week David Miliband would do well to ponder some wise advice from a great predecessor. Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister in the days of the British Empire, dispensed immense global power; but that did not mean that he liked playing about with that power.

Many factors are involved in the present conflict but the central one is straightforward: the majority of the Ossetes living south of the main Caucasus range in Georgia wish to unite with the Ossetes living to the north, in an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation; and the Georgians, regarding South Ossetia as both a legal and an historic part of their national territory, refuse to accept this.

All politics is local, the saying goes. The adage is particularly true in the United States. The attempt to understand next year's presidential election contest in simple terms of Left versus Right is profoundly misleading. The US is a country with culturally distinct regions bigger than many nation states. The party that wins next year will represent a confederation of regions, not a consistent political ideology.