Report in Daily Outlook Afghanistan, Dec 1,2015 BRUSSELS – NATO is planning to keep about 12,000 troops in Afghanistan next year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday, despite earlier plans to downsize the force. NATO had initially planned to have a smaller, civilian-led presence take over from its Resolute Support training and advisory mission. But questions about whether the military alliance would proceed with its plans emerged in September after Taliban fighters temporarily…
Posts published in December 2015
KHAAMA PRESS, Nov 30 2015, 2:54 pm The National Directorate of Security (NDS) – Afghanistan’s intelligence agency has detained 13 members the Taliban and the Islamic State (IS) that also goes by its Arabic name of Daesh in eastern Nangarhar province. A statement released by the agency on Monday states that the insurgents were active in Bati Kot, Nazyan, Chaparhar and Ghanikhil districts. Four pairs of army suits, bombs and other materials used in terrorist…
The writer is a long-time specialist on Chinese law, is Distinguished Lecturer in Residence (ret.) at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law The criminal process remains a crude tool of Communist Party policy in China. The suppression of activists by the party-state continues with blatant repression of speech and conduct deemed dangerous to stability. Once again, the absurdly broad crime of “picking quarrels” has been linked with “gathering crowds to disrupt order in…
As China prepares to observe World AIDS Day on Tuesday, health officials and researchers are raising alarms over an increase in new infections among high school and college students. Most are young men who have had unprotected sex with other men, Wu Zunyou, director of the National Center for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Disease Control and Prevention, told China Daily. As of October 2015, China had about 575,000 people living withH.I.V./AIDS, according to Chen Zhongdan,…
By Ellen Nakashima, national security reporter, in The Washington Post, Nov 30, 2015 at 9.56 PM The Chinese military scaled back its cyber theft of U.S. commercial secrets in the wake of Justice Department indictments of five officers, and the surprising drawdown shows that the law enforcement action had a more significant impact than is commonly assumed, current and former U.S. officials said. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has not substantially reengaged in commercial cyberespionage…
That there has been a reduction in terrorist incidents countrywide in the last year is undeniable. It is equally undeniable that the threat of terrorism remains high, and may be higher in official perceptions than hitherto. The authorities in Punjab have issued a warning of possible attacks by the Islamic State (IS) or its local franchisees or affiliates. Intelligence agencies would not issue a warning as explicit and detailed as this unless they had…