WASHINGTON — Even as the Pakistani government plays down the American role in its military operations in Taliban-controlled areas along the border with Afghanistan, the United States has quietly rushed hundreds of millions of dollars in arms, equipment and sophisticated sensors to Pakistani forces in recent months, said senior American and Pakistani officials.
During preparations this spring for the Pakistani campaigns in Swat and South Waziristan, President Obama personally intervened at the request of Pakistan’s top army general to speed the delivery of 10 Mi-17 troop transport helicopters. Senior Pentagon officials …

ABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.
The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

If world powers are not successful in efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, an Israeli strike on Iran could become a reality, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Beirut, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday.
The French foreign minister suggested that time was indeed short for a solution to the Iranian threat. “There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat.”

Biofuel refineries in the US have set fresh records for grain use every month since May. Almost a third of the US corn harvest will be diverted into ethanol for motors this year, or 12pc of the global crop.
The world’s grain stocks have dropped from four to 2.6 months cover since 2000, despite two bumper harvests in North America. China’s inventories are at a 30-year low. Asian rice stocks are near danger level.
Yet farm commodities have largely missed …

Secretary of Russia’s National Security Council Nikolai Patrushev says the country should be ready for “large-scale conflicts”.
“In 1993, we said that military conflicts have been ruled out, but life has shown this is not the case,” AFP quoted Patrushev, as saying on Thursday.
“There have been regional and local conflicts, and we cannot rule out large-scale conflicts and we need to be ready for this,” he added.
Patrushev made the comments while discussing a new version of Russia’s military doctrine, which officials have been drafting in recent months.
Last week, Patrushev said the …

A former Central Intelligence Agency officer has confirmed US’ relations with the terrorist group Jundullah, despite the CIA knowing that the group has close links with the al-Qaeda.
“American intelligence has also had contact with Jundullah. But that contact, as Iran almost certainly knows, was confined to intelligence-gathering on the country,” Robert Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer wrote on the Time.com, IRNA reported early on Saturday.
However, he noted that the US-Jundullah relationship “was never formalized, and contact was sporadic.”

A bomb attack on Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard that killed over 40 people including top generals was carried out by terrorists trained by America and Britain in nearby Pakistan, a senior commander said on Monday.
“The terrorists were trained in the neighbouring country by the Americans and British,” General Mohammad Pakpour, head of the Guard’s ground forces, told state television. “The enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran are unable to tolerate the unity in the country.”
Gen Pakpour, whose deputy Gen Nour Ali Shoushtari was the most senior officer killed in …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Securities exchanges have a sound network back-up if a severe pandemic keeps people home and clogging the Internet, but the Homeland Security Department has done little planning, Congressional investigators said on Monday.
The department does not even have a plan to start work on the issue, the General Accountability Office said.
But the Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, …

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