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Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Thursday threw his first punch at President Barack Obama after several weeks of praise for the new leader, criticizing the U.S. defense of Israel and demanding the return Guantanamo Bay military base to Cuba. Castro's latest essay, published on an official Web site, came one week after he called Obama "intelligent and noble" and said he would cut back on his writings to prevent interfering with Cuban government decisions. In the essay, Castro lambasted Obama for backing Israel's defense against attacks by Palestinian militants. He said it demonstrated "the abusive character of the empire's power" and insisted it would contribute to "the genocide against the Palestinians." Advertisement   "It is the way our friend Obama has fallen into sharing Israel's genocide against Palestinians," Castro wrote in his called "Deciphering the thought of the new U.S. president." The missive Thursday raised new...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Every night around 8 o'clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan's most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing — or a beheading. Hundreds gathered Jan. 11 in Swat to watch drug dealers punished. The Taliban also have made it a crime to shave a beard. Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed "un-Islamic" activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees — and those they plan to kill. "They control everything through the radio," said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. ...

Thousands of Turks gave their prime minister a hero's welcome as he returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos having denounced Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip. Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of "killing children on the beach" during a discussion on Thursday with Shimon Peres, the Israeli president. The Turkish leader then clashed with the panel's American moderator, who tried to cut him off. As Mr Erdogan quoted the opinions of academics that Israel had become a "raider state", the chairman sought to silence him. Visibly infuriated by this interruption, the prime minister walked off the stage, saying: "I will not come to Davos again". As he left, Mr Erdogan received a congratulatory hug from a beaming Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, who was also on the panel. Mr Erdogan's central complaint was that he received only 12 minutes to speak, compared with the 25 minutes allowed to Mr Peres. He stressed that thi...

Islamabad - A senior Pakistani police officer on Thursday announced the arrest of three people he said were 'trained and pampered' by the Indian intelligence agency for carrying out terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The Pakistani nationals had planned to target government buildings and important personalities, including religious figures, city police chief Pervez Rathore told reporters in Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab. Rathore said the three suspects were detained close to the Pakistan-India border, which, he said, they crossed several times to receive training in bomb making from India's Research and Analysis Wing spy agency. 'They (Indian agents) were encouraging them, they were training them and they paid them in millions,' he said. During preliminary interrogations, the detainees confessed that they detonated a dust-bin bomb in 2006 in Lahore, killing two bystanders and injuring 16, the police officer said. The allegations came as tensions ...

I met Richard Holbrooke at a conference in Kazakhstan a few years ago alongside the arch-neocon Richard Perle. I was surprised by the similarity of views they both held towards the Muslim world in general and towards what the U.S. was doing post- 9/11 in Afghanistan. And if we remember that Holbrooke was Hillary Clinton's senior policy advisor, we will understand where he is really coming from. After all, Hillary Clinton supported the Iraq war until it became unpopular in the U.S., when she conveniently changed positions. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— Accept that Obama has nothing positive to offer Pakistan . On the contrary, following the drone attacks, he moved to name Richard Holbrooke as Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to cut off a major chunk of money owed to Pakistan for military services rendered . And what has our reaction been? Without looking at Holbrooke's record, we have welcomed his appointment, and in response to the cutting of money owed, we have decla...

Description CNN's Wolf Blitzer talks to the former president of Pakistan about the war on terror and the new U.S. president. What are the opinions now since it has almost been one year from Feb 2008 general elections? There were quite a few interesting questions asked by Wolf Blitzer relating Pakistan, ISI & Musharraf in person. Embedded video from CNN Video Please Also Read Project for the New American Century (PNAC) & Pakistan Why Pakistan is Paying the Price?

With 180 girls' schools torched since 2008 in Pakistan's Swat Valley and some 900 indefinitely closed, the future for education for some 125,000 young women is under dire threat by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The latest bombings took place Monday in the district capital, Mingora, "once considered the safest place in Swat," according to The Guardian . Five girls' schools were leveled by TTP militants who last week decreed a permanent ban on education for girls. In recent weeks, residents who have crossed the TTP have been strung-up from trees, beaten, or had their shops destroyed while markets have been ruled " no go " areas for women. First mobilized during the 1980s by the CIA and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) as "plausibly deniable" assets to wage "holy war" against Afghanistan's socialist government, organized crime and drug-linked jihadi groups now threaten Pakistan itself. Call it "blo...