‘Pak ‘Troikas’ trio of meetings within a week suggests something “significant” being planned’

September 26th, 2009 Obama, first lady watch daughter Malia play soccerWASHINGTON — After a week of meetings with world leaders, President Barack Obama is enjoying some family time. Obama left the White House on Saturday morning for a soccer field in northwest Washington where his 11-year-old daughter Malia was playing soccer.

September 22nd, 2009 Family holds out hope for hikers detained in IranPHILADELPHIA — The brother of one of three American hikers detained in Iran says the family hopes President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (ah-muh-DEE'-neh-zhahd) brings the trio with him when he visits the United Nations. Ahmadinejad is addressing the General Assembly on Wednesday in New York.

September 18th, 2009 Obama to meet Japan's new prime minister at UNWASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will meet Japan's new leader for the first time at the United Nations next week. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said that Obama will meet Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Wednesday.

September 8th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has met Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden five times, says a former official of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), a claim hotly denied by Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Speaking in ARY news programme "Eleventh Hour", the former ISI official and now chairman Defence of Human Rights organisation Khalid Khwaja claimed he had arranged meetings between bin Laden and Nawaz Sharif on bin Laden's request and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief had held five meetings with the Al Qaeda chief so far.

September 4th, 2009 PESHAWAR - An article in The Frontier Post has suggested, though without substantiated proof, that India's external intelligence agency - the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) - is operating in Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in collaboration with newly established Afghan intelligence agency RAAM (earlier name KHAD). According to the article, Afghanistan has made two detachments in Riasat 25 and 33.

August 24th, 2009 STOCKHOLM - Participants at the World Water Week conference here have urged the governments to include the problem of water shortage in the negotiations on climate change. Access to drinking water has a significant impact on economy, health, agriculture and other spheres of life, they said.

July 26th, 2009 LONDON - A Church of England guidance is being issued to clergy suggesting that churches should try harder to make bald and overweight people feel welcome. The book, called Everybody Welcome, published this week suggests that bald and overweight people should be regarded as worshippers with "special needs" alongside the blind, the deaf, breast-feeding mothers, very short people and readers of tabloid newspapers.

July 21st, 2009 WASHINGTON - Advertisements that only mention taste and ignore other senses will be less effective, suggests a new study. Naturally, most food advertisements mention the taste of the food being marketed.

July 21st, 2009 WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's just concluded visit to India has resulted in significant expansion of the bilateral and multilateral relationship between the two nations, according to a senior US official. "What you are seeing in terms of the agenda is a very significant expansion of the relationship and the issues that will be subject to our bilateral and multilateral relationships going forward," Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J.

June 6th, 2009 NEW YORK - Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama stopped to say hello to the Eiffel Tower during their visit to Paris. The First Lady and her daughters left many beaming after waving to fellow tourists, who greeted the mum-of-two.

May 9th, 2009 KLANG - The wives and a fiancée of the HINDRAF trio - M. Manoharan, K.

May 9th, 2009 Pelosi still explaining interrogation briefingWASHINGTON — It's a political squall that won't die: What did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi know about harsh questioning of detainees, and when did she know it? On Friday, the California Democrat was forced to issue yet another press release, reiterating her past assertions that she had been briefed in 2002 only on new interrogation techniques that had been deemed legal and were planned for future use. Pelosi had made the same comments in 2007 when word first leaked that she was aware of the interrogation program and had not objected to it.

May 7th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has suggested that Afghanistan and Pakistan are holding "breakthrough" talks at the White House, where President Barack Obama is in the midst of two days of bilateral meetings and then a trilateral talk with President Hamid Karzai and President Asif Ali Zardari. "I think the takeaway is that this process is producing some very promising early signs," Clinton told reporters at the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

April 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is quietly pushing forward with efforts to reopen channels of communication with Cuba, according to White House and State Department officials. A New York Times report quoted officials as saying that informal meetings were being planned between the State Department and Cuban diplomats in the United States to determine whether the two governments could open formal talks on a variety of issues, including migration, drug trafficking and other regional security matters.

March 8th, 2009 LUCKNOW - Eight-year-old Pinki Sonkar, the protagonist of Megan Mylan's Oscar-winning documentary 'Smile Pinki', will publicly expose the 'anti-Dalit face' of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, the National Dalit Front (NDF) said Saturday. 'With the help of Pinki we are now going to unmask the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government, which only pretends to fight for Dalit rights,' NDF general secretary Udit Raj told IANS on telephone from New Delhi.