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While his government’s focus remains squarely on domestic issues, Mr Modi is also charting a rather ambitious foreign policy course. He has already visited Bhutan and his future destinations over the next few months are likely to include Japan, Brazil, Southeast Asia, Australia and Nepal. Meanwhile, the Chinese foreign minister has saluted the new Modi government for injecting “new vitality into an ancient civilisation”.

<p>Reported details of the high-profile prisoner swap that freed Bowe Bergdahl over the weekend are not telling the full story ... The Haqqani Network, a terrorist group operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan ... the details of that exchange do not add up.</p>

Ostensibly, official US policy on Iran’s nuclear program is clear: The US will not allow Iran to produce a nuclear bomb. Moreover, US President Barack Obama has said that, for this purpose, “all options are on the table” – implying a military option as well. In addition, according to many reports in American newspapers, Obama has ordered the development of diversified US military capabilities with which to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, far beyond what existed in the previous administration – providing further evidence of the president’s seriousness. But many people do not understand the meaning behind the vague statement, “We...

This Thursday, Mr. Obama will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican after a three-decade divergence with the church. By the late 1980s, the Catholic hierarchy had taken a conservative turn that de-emphasized social engagement and elevated the culture wars that would eventually cast Mr. Obama as an abortion-supporting enemy. Mr. Obama, who went on to find his own faith with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s Trinity United Church of Christ, drifted from his youthful, church-backed activism to become a pragmatic politician and the president with a terrorist “kill list.” The meeting this week is a potential point of...

Iran is assisting key Al-Qaeda figures to transfer Sunni fighters into Syria, the Obama administration charged Thursday. The accusation, detailed in new sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury department targeting Iranian terror links, indicates Iranian officials are backing opposing sides in the Syrian civil war. Olimzhon Adkhamovich Sadikov, described by the Treasury Department as an Iran-based Islamic Jihad Union facilitator who “operates there with the knowledge of Iranian authorities,” was designated for providing logistical support and funding to Al-Qaeda’s Iran-based network. -excerpt- Sadikov, also known as Jafar al-Uzbeki and Jafar Muidinov, serves as a “key extremist smuggler based in Mashhad,...

It is happening in slow motion, to be sure. But we are witnessing how a nuclear armed Iran is changing the face of the Middle East. For years, US leaders, including President Barack Obama warned that a nuclear armed Iran would spark a regional arms race. And this is happening. As the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens noted this week, Turkey signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Japan that includes "a provision allowing Turkey to enrich uranium and extract polonium, a potential material for nuclear weapons." Saudi Arabia has long had a nuclear cooperation deal with Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons...

Peshawar, The lawyer of the Dr Shakeel Afridi escaped from the Pakistan and run in Dubai on Wednesday. Unknown people threaten him because of the counseling of Dr Shakeel Afridi. Who’s behind the prison in the linked with Lashker Islam (Banned organization) in Khyber agency (tribal area of Pakistan). The lawyer for a Pakistani doctor – Shekel Afridi – who helped the US to track down Osama bin Laden has fled the country after receiving threats from militants, relatives said. Lawyer Sami Ullah Afridi went abroad after militants threatened to blow up his car and kill his family, a relative...

Saudi King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were not won over by President Barack Obama's pledges in personal phone calls to the two Middle East leaders last week not to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Their skepticism only grew. This development in the Iranian nuclear controversy finds two of the three leaders trapped in a credibility gap between their public pronouncements and the Iranian reality which has long overtaken them both. Obama’s oft-repeated pledge is canceled out by most Western nuclear experts, who are convinced that Iran managed to advance to a capacity for producing four...

Excerpt: Mincing no words, the young sergeant’s father told the New York Times, last year, that he was exasperated and lacking in confidence in the Obama administration in bringing his son home. Both Mr. Bergdahl and his wife, Jani, said they were upset that although they had had good relations with the State Department and the Pentagon during the three years that their son has been missing, they had never heard from President Obama. The two are Ron Paul supporters and have turned increasingly against the war in Afghanistan, although they support the president’s plan not to withdraw most American...

The Obama administration views Israel as one of the top spying threats facing its intelligence services, leaked documents reveal. A secret budget request obtained by The Washington Post from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden lumps Israel alongside U.S. foes Iran and Cuba as “key targets” for U.S. counterintelligence efforts. The document suggests Israel does not believe U.S. assurances that its interests are aligned with Israel's on crucial issues such as Iran and peace talks with the Palestinians. “To further safeguard our classified networks, we continue to strengthen insider threat detection capabilities across the Community,” reads the FY 2013 congressional budget...

New Delhi/Washington: India has sharply rejected that it "financed problems" in Afghanistan to create trouble for Pakistan, as alleged by Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's Defence Secretary nominee. Despite the controversy, the US Senate on Tuesday cleared the way for confirmation of Mr Hagel to be the US' next Defense Secretary. The confirmation is expected later in the day. "Senator Hagel's remarks are in sharp contrast to the viewpoint of the Obama Administration that has always been in praise of India's developmental role in Afghanistan and in fact has been pressing New Delhi to do more in Afghanistan," a statement...

WASHINGTON: American conservatives trying to torpedo the confirmation of Senator Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for US defence secretary, have pulled out an "India card". Hagel has been accused of fingering India for its alleged disruptive role against Pakistan in Afghanistan. A shocked New Delhi, which sees Hagel as a friend, angrily denied any suggestion that India is a troublemaker in the region. The provocative remark, in which Senator Hagel accuses New Delhi of "financing problems" for Pakistan in Afghanistan, was dredged out by a conservative publication on the eve of his confirmation hearing which his former Republican colleagues have...

After the successful May 2011 raid that took down Osama bin Laden, President Obama said that “his [bin Laden’s] demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.” Pakistan’s treatment of CIA informant Dr. Shakil Afridi tells a different story, however. The country’s spy agency (Inter-Services Intelligence) promptly arrested the doctor for helping Americans identify OBL’s compound. In addition to a fine and his entire bank account being looted, Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison for high treason and is now reportedly being tortured: ... According to Afridi, ISI “regards America as its “worst...

The Obama administration is currently engaged in peace negotiations with the Taliban despite the fact that Barack Obama - during a Presidential debate in October of 2008 - excoriated the Pakistani government for conducting peace talks with the Taliban. "We have to change our policies with Pakistan," said Obama in '08. "We can't coddle a dictator, give him billions of dollars, and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban..."VIDEO

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

Why are the college records, of a 51-year-old President of the United States, so important to keep secret? I think I know the answer. If anyone should have questions about Obama’s record at Columbia University, it’s me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of ’83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I’d heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then- Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never...

At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21. The Daily Caller has seen a portion of the chapter in which the stunning revelation appears. In ”Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him,“ Richard Miniter writes that Obama canceled the “kill” mission in January 2011, again in February, and a third time in March. Obama’s close adviser Valerie Jarrett persuaded him...

A report in Pakistani media indicates that one of the Islamic world’s most notorious charities has been making appeals for zakat funds using Twitter. Jamaatud Dawa is considered the political arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jihadist terrorist organization that carried out the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack. In fact, in 2008, after the Mumbai attack, the United Nations declared Jamaatud Dawa a terrorist entity. The message on Twitter, which was also posted on its Facebook page, appealed for Zakat in any form.

Last Sunday, Up with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes ignited significant outrage with his musings about the word “heroes.” This morning, Up panelist and national security reporter for The Nation Jeremy Scahill waded into controversial semantic waters by repeatedly accusing President Obama of “murder” through the administration’s use of drone strikes, which have killed an indeterminate number of civilians. Surprisingly, Scahill’s indictment of the President was challenged, not by Hayes, but by Redstate.com co-founder Joshua Treviño. The topic of discussion was the so-called “kill list” of suspected terrorists to be exterminated in drone strikes. Hayes began by trying to drill...

GOP Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, expressed concern Wednesday about the extent of the Obama administration’s efforts to protect the Pakistan doctor who was sent to prison in Pakistan for treason after helping to find Usama bin Laden. "This has been handled very poorly right from the time of the raid," King told FoxNews.com. Dr. Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the Al Qaeda chief in a May 2011 raid. The operation...