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Pakistan threatens to pull back troops after U.S. cuts aid
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan threatened Tuesday to pull back troops from the Afghan border in response to US aid cuts, defying American demands to open new fronts in the war on Al-Qaeda and escalating tensions with Washington.
“I think the next step is, the government or the armed forces will move the soldiers from the border areas,” Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told the English-language Express 24/7 television.
“If at all things become difficult, we will just get our armed forces back.”
The United States confirmed Sunday that it had decided to withhold a third of its annual $2.7 billion security assistance to Islamabad, bringing relations to a new low after the covert American raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Cuts of $800 million reportedly include about $300 million used to reimburse Pakistan for some costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border, a hotbed of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
“We cannot afford to keep our military… it costs you extra amount of money when you are having soldiers in the mountains, so we will definitely use that tool,” Mukhtar said.
The military did not Read more…
China’s ‘eye-in-the-sky’ nears par with US
China has launched reconnaissance satellites that can monitor targets up to six hours a day, a think-tanks says
China’s rapidly expanding satellite programme could alter power dynamics in Asia and reduce the US military’s scope for operations in the region, according to new research.
Chinese reconnaissance satellites can now monitor targets for up to six hours a day, the World Security Institute, a Washington think-tank, has concluded in a new report. The People’s Liberation Army, which could only manage three hours of daily coverage just 18 months ago, is now nearly on a par with the US military in its ability to monitor fixed targets, according to the findings.
“Starting from almost no live surveillance capability 10 years ago, today the PLA has likely equalled the US’s ability to observe targets from space for some real-time operations,” two of the institute’s China researchers, Eric Hagt and Matthew Durnin, write in the Journal of Strategic Studies.
World Population to Hit Seven Billion by October
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7, 2011 (IPS) – The United Nations commemorates World Population Day next week against the backdrop of an upcoming landmark event: global population hitting the seven billion mark by late October this year.
According to current projections, and with some of the world’s poorest nations doubling their populations in the next decade, the second milestone will be in 2025: an eight billion population over the next 14 years.
Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS seven billion represents a challenge, an opportunity and a call to action.
On World Population Day Jul. 11, he will be Read more…
Heart Disease And Stroke Worldwide Tied To National Income
An analysis of heart disease and stroke statistics collected in 192 countries by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that the relative burden of the two diseases varies widely from country to country and is closely linked to national income, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Reporting this week in the journal Circulation, the UCSF scientists found that developing countries tend to suffer more death and disability by stroke than heart disease – opposite the situation in the United States and other countries with higher national incomes.
This map shows the burden of disease from stroke and/or ischemic heart disease. Click to enlarge.
Credit: University of California – San Francisco
Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?
Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America’s rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don’t see it that way.
They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighborhood than a military conflict.
These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen – and since last month in Somalia – should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are Read more…
Apparently, China is Trying to Buy Facebook
Maybe it’s decided that Facebook is the lesser of two evils when it comes to Western social networks. Maybe it’s just Beijing buying itself a birthday present. Whatever the reason, it appears that China — or more specifically, one of China’s sovereign wealth funds — is trying to buy a significant stake in Facebook.
A Business Insider report cites “a source at a fund that buys stock from former Facebook employees” who was approached directly about helping to put together a stake big enough “to matter” and “a second source tells us there is a rumor going around the social network that Citibank is at this very moment trying to acquire as much as $1.2 billion worth of Facebook stock on behalf of two sovereign wealth funds – China’s and another from the Middle East.”
$1.2 billion isn’t going to be nearly enough of a stake to matter at a company whose value is pegged around $100 billion, but the news has caused some concern, given that Read more…
US to upgrade F-16s, KMT lawmaker says
The US is expected to announce soon that it will help Taiwan upgrade its current F-16 aircraft rather than sell it more advanced aircraft, a senior legislator said yesterday.
The move to upgrade the F-16A/B combat aircraft rather than sell Taiwan the more advanced F-16C/Ds it wants will generate less pressure from Beijing, which strongly opposes any arms sales to Taiwan, analysts say.
“This will be a compromise deal,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), who chairs the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
Taiwan has repeatedly pressed the US to sell it F-16C/Ds, as China embarks on a rapid drive to build up its offensive military capability.
However, it is feared that such a sale would “anger” Beijing, which reacted furiously in January last year when US President Barack Obama announced a US$6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan.
That package included Patriot missiles, Black Hawk helicopters and equipment for Read more…
UN Criticizes China’s Failure to Arrest Sudan’s Bashir
The United Nations has criticized China for failing to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during his visit to Beijing this week.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Thursday she is “disappointed” China welcomed Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court.
The ICC has charged Bashir with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Pillay said Thursday that even though China is not an ICC member, Beijing still Read more…
Pakistan tells US to leave `drone attack base`
RAWALPINDI: Pakistan on Wednesday told the United States to leave a remote desert air base reportedly used as a hub for covert CIA drone attacks.
“We have told them (US officials) to leave the Shamsi Airbase,” Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said while talking to journalists here. His remarks are the latest indication of Pakistan attempting to limit US activities since a clandestine American military raid killed Osama bin Laden.
The minister reiterated that the trust deficit between Pakistan and the United States has increased after the Read more…
Britain in list of countries ‘most at risk’ if an asteroid strikes
Britain has been identified among a host of countries scientists believe would be worst affected in the event of an asteroid strike.
Experts at Southampton University have drawn up a league table of countries most likely to suffer severe loss of life or catastrophic damage should a large asteroid hit Earth.
The list is largely made up of developed nations including China, Japan, the United States and Italy, on the basis that the size of their populations would mean millions of deaths.
The US, China, Indonesia, India and Japan are most in danger on this basis. Canada, the US, China, Japan and Sweden are rated most at risk in terms of potential damage to their infrastructure.
The report comes after a rock the size of a house came within 7,500 miles of Earth earlier this Read more…
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