More than 70 people are feared to have been killed in Afghanistan after a landslide triggered by a double earthquake buried homes under earth and rock, officials said Tuesday. Two shallow quakes less than half an hour apart shook the mountainous Hindu Kush region on Monday, starting a slide of debris that smashed into a remote village, burying mudbrick houses to a depth of up to 100 metres (300 feet). In Bu ...

Last week, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that NATO had inked a deal to move its equipment and vehicles out of Afghanistan via the so-called “Northern Distribution Network,” or NDN. NATO thinks this northern evacuation route gives them a way to wind down the war without having to rely on Pakistan. NATO is overselling this new deal. While the NDN certainly lessens the need for Pakista ...

LinkedIn Hacked by Russian hackers - 6.5 mln passwords compromised A large set of LinkedIn passwords have reportedly been posted on a Russian hacker web forum, landing millions of accounts in danger of being cracked. ­Thus far, most passwords remain encrypted – the hackers who stole the data asked their “colleagues” to help decipher the files. However, the encryption is quite easy to break, so the users mus ...

By George Friedman The U.S. military for years has debated the utility of counterinsurgency operations. Drawing from a sentiment that harkens back to the Vietnam War, many within the military have long opposed counterinsurgency operations. Others see counterinsurgency as the unavoidable future of U.S. warfare. The debate is between those who believe the purpose of a conventional military force is to defeat ...

Simon Denyer It was supposed to be the motor for the next phase of India’s economic resurgence, but the country’s manufacturing sector has hit a brick wall, according to new data released Thursday. Dragged down by a sluggish manufacturing sector, India’s economic growth rate slowed to 6.5 percent in the 2011-12 fiscal year, its slowest rate in nine years and well below the 8.5 percent recorded a year earlie ...

Robert Wexler Editor’s note: This article is one of two debating the necessity of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear project. The other, by Elliott Abrams, argues “The Grounds for an Israeli Attack.” Israeli and American leaders are in full agreement on the need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The question, therefore, is not if we should thwart Iran’s illicit nuclear ambitions, but rather h ...

By Michael Singh How Tehran is outflanking Obama We have failed to understand Iran's motives Last week’s talks in Baghdad between Iran and the P5-plus-1 — the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — yielded no agreement. Paradoxically, however, both Washington and Tehran are likely to view the negotiations as successful, but for vastly different reasons. There is an interest that both Ir ...

This month's NATO summit in Chicago has provided many writers and analysts a moment to debate possible outcomes of the U.S. endeavor in Afghanistan.  Commentary ranges from David Ignatius "thinking the unthinkable" about the Taliban returning to Kabul, to former First Lady Laura Bush urging the international community to remember the women of Afghanistan.  The meeting provides a timely inflection point abou ...