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The investment and security pact would vastly extend China’s influence in the Middle East, throwing Iran an economic lifeline and creating new flash points with the United States. Iran and China have quietly drafted a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of Chinese investments in energy and other sectors, undercutting the Trump administration’s efforts to isolate the Iranian government because of its nuclear and military ambitions.

Origins of chloroquine in India (and also of Gin and Tonic): Fascinating story of the connection between Hydroxychloroquine, British India, Srirangapatna and Gin & Tonic....... As most of us are already aware, Hydroxychloroquine has taken the world by storm. Every newspaper is talking about it, and all countries are requesting India to supply it. Now, a curious person might wonder why and how this chemical composition is so deeply entrenched in India, and is there any history behind it. Well, there is an interesting history behind it which goes all the way to Tipu Sultan's defeat. In 1799, when Tipu...

Putin offers to sell Saudi Arabia its missile defense systems in the wake of the attack on its oil facilities. “We are ready to help Saudi Arabia so that she can protect her territory,” he says. “She can do so in the same way that Iran has already done in buying the S-300 Russian missile system and the same way that Turkey has already done in buying the S-400 Russian missile system,” Putin adds at a press conference in Ankara, alongside the Turkish and Iranian leaders. The US has blamed Iran for the attack on the Saudi oil facilities.

Despite being one of the poorest nations in the world, Afghanistan may be sitting on one of the richest troves of minerals in the world, valued at nearly $1 trillion, scientists say. Afghanistan, a country nearly the size of Texas, is loaded with minerals deposited by the violent collision of the Indian subcontinent with Asia. The U.S. Geological Survey began inspecting what mineral resources Afghanistan had after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban from power in the country in 2004.

China will refuse to give up the “special and differential treatment” it enjoys as a developing nation at the World Trade Organisation, in a rebuke to a US proposal that would pare back the privileges China and other nations enjoy on trade...

KOCHI: The swirling multicolour LED lights that give dance floors their zing have found a totally different use in Kerala’s Wayanad district. The forest department has deployed .. Read more at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/67016900.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst ..

“QUEEN ELIZABETH must claim her right to rule Muslims.” So ran a recent headline on the Arab Atheist Network, a web forum. It was only partly in jest. According to reports from Casablanca to Karachi, the British monarch is descended from the Prophet Muhammad, making her a cousin of the kings of Morocco and Jordan, not to mention of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader.

A small business owner in Oregon has a message for CNN, ignorant liberals and Bruce Springsteen: “We’ve had it with you idiots.” Kevin Kerwin is the proprietor of Kevin the Geek Computer Repair store in Lake Oswego. He’s also one of the few conservatives around town. Click here for a free subscription to Todd’s newsletter: a must-read for conservatives! “Oregon is a very beautiful state, but it’s infested with liberals,” Kevin tells me.

Lagers may be ubiquitous but India Pale Ales are beers with a backstory BEER is for drinking. But beer is also an occasion for conversation—and, if good enough, a subject for it, too. That is where India Pale Ales, or IPAs, come into their own. Few beers incite and enrich conversation as much. Their distinctive character—the “firm bitterness [that] lingers long and clean” in one, the “complex aromatic notes of citrus, berry, tropical fruit and pine” in another—spur discussions that spill over from tap rooms to websites with ease. The plethora of craft brewers that has sprung up over the...

After correctly predicting Donald Trump would win the presidential election, Michael Moore made a new prediction that he may not go on to serve his term while talking to Seth Meyers. The Oscar-winning director made waves when he predicted that Trump would win back in July and now he says he takes no pleasure in being right. "I never wanted to be more wrong," Moore told Seth Meyers on Wednesday's "Late Night." "I remember when I said this on the show, the audience moaned, like 'no,' all because it didn't seem possible. She was ahead in the polls, she was winning the...

The GOP "Elite" has essentially abandoned Trump, turned against him, brushing aside his numerous republican supporters. Hillary is leading by 8 points. Trump's sexual innuendos, albeit crude, are having a devastating effect on voters, especially those with a pretense of self-righteousness. The numbers of all the minorities that Hillary panders to is vast and together represent a formidable percentage of voters. Those are facts and we would be deluding ourselves if we believed otherwise and failed to recognize that we are in dire straits just 28 days before elections. As a dedicated Trump supporter, I feel discouraged, dejected and, actually,...

WASHINGTON: US shouldn't stand in the way of partition of Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite majority states, and the same applies to Turkey and Iran where Kurds may want separation, says Ralph Peters, a retired military officer and author of Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World. "Certainly, our efforts to rehabilitate the region would go more smoothly were Iraq to remain happily whole within its present borders. What if, despite our earnest advice, the people of Iraq resist the argument that they would be better off economically and more secure were they to remain in a single state?...

MANAMA March 22. As the British and U.S. forces seek to consolidate their hold over Southern Iraq, the faint contours of a post-war power sharing arrangement in this area are beginning to emerge. In a significant development, Kuwaiti troops showed up in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, soon after the British and U.S. forces took it over on Friday, and hoisted their national flag over a captured building. The move was significant on two counts. First, it symbolically avenged Kuwait's invasion by Iraq 13 years ago. But more importantly, military analysts are veering to the view that Umm Qasr...

LONDON: This also involves tapes, but in a career that could enable her to appear on peppy music channels rather than Al-Jazeera, Waffa Bin Laden, niece of Osama Bin Laden, has set her sight on becoming a pop star. Waffa, a trained lawyer, has already been touted as a Natalie Imbruglia look-alike on the London party circuit and is busy recording demos. She arrived in Britain six months ago and has since been busy in the studio recording demos with John Benson, the former manager of All Saints. But the 27-year-old is said to be worried that her family ties...

WASHINGTON, March 6: Immigration officials in Oklahoma said on Thursday Muslim women in the state could wear scarves for green card photos and state officials also decided to accept similar photos for driver's licences. The decision, however, has provoked a barrage of hate mail, officials said. In a letter to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Immigration and Naturalization Service confirmed that it is already their policy to allow head scarves in pictures. "The person must remain clearly identifiable from the photograph and should include a brief statement along with that photo explaining why it does not meet (the usual)...

Yvonne Ridley, the British journalist who was captured by the Taliban when she sneaked into Afghanistan last year, has announced her plans to convert to Islam. In an interview with Newsweek in its latest issue, the woman who hit world headlines because of the dramatic way in which she entered Afghanistan on a mule wearing a burqa and was captured said she began studying Islam after returning home to Britain. She denied that she was converting because she was suffering from 'Stockholm syndrome' (in which kidnap victims come to love their kidnappers). During her captivity, an imam visited Ridley and...

BEIJING: US President George W. Bush will stay in one of the swankiest hotels in Beijing during his visit this week and enjoy the luxury of its best suite -- the same one arch-enemy Hillary Clinton slept in four years ago. Ex-First Lady Clinton, who accompanied her husband, then-president Bill Clinton, to China in 1998, was one of the first occupants of the 3,800-dollar-a-night luxury suite, said Kelly Li, public relations manager of the St. Regis hotel in central Beijing. Regardless of his feelings for Hillary Clinton -- widely reviled by right-wingers in the United States -- Bush will be ...

WASHINGTON: Jet engines for the Light Combat Aircraft and gun locating radars for the Army are on their way to India. The Bush administration has notified US lawmakers that it is going ahead with the supply a variety of arms and high-tech equipment to India. The communication, which is Congressionally mandated, is sent to what is called the committees of jurisdiction — in this case the House International Relations Committee and the Armed Forces Committee. It is essentially a way of informing the Congress of an executive action, which usually takes place within 30 days of the notification. With this ...

KARACHI, Feb 8: US kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl is believed to have been recovered and he is scheduled to leave Islamabad for United Kingdom on Saturday morning. According to documentary evidence obtained by Dawn, Daniel Pearl is booked on PIA flight PK-757 for London which leaves Islamabad at 0910 hours. His ticket No is T-214201897654. The booking was made on Feb 4. Officials, however, refused to provide information as to when the kidnapped journalist was recovered from Karachi and when taken to Islamabad. Some sources in the police department said that Daniel Pearl was recovered early on Friday morning and ...

KARACHI, Feb 7: Law enforcement agencies are getting closer to the culprits who had kidnapped US journalist Daniel Pearl some two weeks ago in the city. "Police investigators are getting closer to the suspects, who are keeping Daniel Pearl in illegal detention and people will hear a good news soon," the provincial police chief Syed Kamal Shah told Dawn after he held a meeting with senior police officials at DIG Karachi (Operation) office on Thursday night. He said the progress was there and investigation was under way to recover Daniel Pearl. About the arrest of other three suspects - Mohammed ...