DOHA, Qatar - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni arrived here Sunday to attend the 8th annual Doha Forum on Democracy, Development and Free Trade, at which she has been invited to give a keynote speech. Senior Lebanese and Iranian officials responded by canceling their participation.
“The Arab states cannot continue sitting on the fence when it comes [...]

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Since the publication of Alexander Yanov’s 1995 book After Yeltsin: ‘Weimar’ Russia (Moscow: KRUK; New York: Slovo-Word), a number of Yanov’s predictions for the post-Yeltsin period have come true. Above all, during the last years, sections of the Russian elite have adopted a paranoid vision of the outside, above all Western, world which, in the [...]

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The Chinese military establishment has gone on an overdrive with its anti-Indian rhetoric, calling it “arrogant” and warning it to stay away from a “path of confrontation”.
According to a Chinese defence think-tank, recent military exercises and re-positioning of troops in north Bengal was a kick-start reaction by “an arrogant” India.
Tibet on the Tube | Tibet crisis: Pics | [...]

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In which our heroine Su Fei goes around Beijing, asking Chinese people what their English names are, and why they need them. Who said China is not a creative country? - Starring Su Fei, shot and edited by Luke Mines, with music by Fernando Fidanza
Watch the YouTube video here.
Check out the Sexy Beijing series here.
Sexy [...]

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A leading Israeli think tank released a report last week that revealed that since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas has built a heavily-armed and well-trained standing army of at least 20,000 men.
In its report entitled “Hamas’s Military Buildup in the Gaza Strip,” the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center used intelligence [...]

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Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal voiced this threat Saturday, April 12.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the raid by Palestinian gunmen on the Israeli-Gaza fuel terminal - and murder of two of its employees, Oleg Lipson and Lev Cerniak - were meant to set the stage for a mass Hamas assault on the Gaza-Israeli border. Earlier [...]

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On April 11, dozens of top Chinese military officers, government and party officials gathered in the frontier city of Urumqi to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Wang Zhen, the man who conquered China’s vast western region for the Communists and in doing so created a unique institution.
In [...]

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Israel is concerned that Iran might start moving weapons to Hezbollah by means of ships that anchor in the Beirut port, government sources in Jerusalem said.
The sources said oversight of marine vessels by UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) was not efficient enough to enforce an embargo on weapons shipments into Lebanon [...]

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The Libyan officer tried to cloak the purpose of his call to the Italian arms dealer. “A friend,” he said, wanted to buy 1 million “pieces” and 50 million items of “food.”
But when that phone call was placed in 2006, Italian police were listening. They knew the meaning. Libya was shopping for guns — lots [...]

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