By Salman Masood & Declan Walsh, New York Times, Dec. 18, 2014
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani court on Thursday granted bail to a militant commander accused of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, drawing loud protests from India.
By Keith Johnson & Jamila Trindle, ForeignPolicy.com, Dec. 16, 2014
Apple shut down the iTunes store, people are racing to buy washer/dryers, and other scenes from an imploding Russian economy
"...The most incredible currency collapse I think I have ever seen in the 17 years in the market, and 26 years covering Russia,” said Tim Ash, head of emerging-markets research at Standard Bank...."
DUBAI: A Saudi imam has sparked uproar by appearing on television along with his wife – whose face was uncovered in an open challenge to strict tradition in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.
Sheikh Ahmad al-Ghamedi, who has said covering the face is not a must for women under Islam, sat alongside his wife Jawaher bint Ali as she spoke to Dubai-based Saudi MBC television, in a program broadcast at the weekend [....]
By Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, Dec. 15/16, 2014
....the numbers seemed backward: The community hospital had charged about $5,500, while the Harvard teaching hospital had billed $1,400 for the much more elaborate test. “Why would that be?” Mr. Charlap asked. “It really bothered me.”
Police say gang that lived near US embassy in Nairobi was "preparing to raid the country's communication systems".
Al Jazeera, Dec. 4 -- Kenyan police have arrested 77 Chinese nationals and are consulting experts to see if they used advanced communications equipment in several houses in an upscale Nairobi neighbourhood to commit espionage. Kenya's foreign ministry has also summoned China's top diplomat in the capital Nairobi as it seeks to establish if Beijing was in anyway linked to the affair.....
Al Jazeera America, Dec. 3,-- More than 150 people, including 38 police, died in a suspected Boko Haram raid on the northeastern Nigerian city of Damaturu this week, police officers as well as a rescue official and a health worker told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday....
Dec. 4, NY Times....The attack came just hours before President Vladimir V. Putin delivered a state of the nation speech in Moscow, in which he made only a passing reference to the violence.
The Russian state news media reported that the militants had seized an office building, which was then recaptured by security forces, and a school. Terrified residents of Grozny said they heard loud explosions and saw armed gunmen roaming the streets....
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was asked to resign his post, officials said, as President Obama’s national security team has struggled to stay ahead of an onslaught of global crises.
The Islamic State has made violence look easy. That's what makes the group so terrifying.
Simon Cottee is a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam.
Getting Close to Terror, but Not to Stop It
Port Authority Officer Kept Sources With Ties to Iran Attacks
by James Risen and Matt Apuzzo, New York Times, Nov. 8/9, 2014
Hey, didn't I read about how this kind of thing needed to be fixed in the 9/11 Report?
....When I asked a longtime source who left the Obama White House years ago for his impressions of Jarrett, he confessed that he was too fearful to speak with me, even off the record.This is not as irrational as it sounds. Obama has said he consults Jarrett on every major decision, something current and former aides corroborate. “Her role since she has been at the White House is one of the broadest and most expansive roles that I think has ever existed in the West Wing"....
[....] Now, more than half of likely 18-29 year-old voters want a Republican-led Congress, according to a new poll from the Harvard University Institute of Politics. It’s a marked shift for the youngest and largest generation of voters, who have supported Democrats reliably since 2004 [....]
By Elizabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, Oct.25, 2014
[....] “How could it be that the doctor was in network and the hospital was in network, but I had to pay separately for the room?” Mr. Boudreau said [....] On maternity wards, new mothers pay for a lactation consultant. An emergency room charges an “activation fee” in addition to its facility charges. Psychologists who have agreed to an insurer’s negotiated rate for neuropsychological testing bill patients an additional $2,000 for an “administration charge.” [....]
