CHINA - Torrential rain battering southern China has forced more than 150,000 people from their homes, toppled hundreds of houses and punched a dangerous hole in the spillway of a dam, Xinhua news agency reported.

INDIA - Indian paramilitary rescue teams rushed on Saturday to an island in one of Asia's largest rivers, where nearly 100,000 people took refuge after heavy monsoon rains flooded their homes, said a local administrator. Nearly 300,000 people in remote northeastern Assam state have seen their homes flooded in three days of nonstop monsoon rain, said state Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman.

BANGLADESH - Torrential rains triggered landslides and flash floods killing six people and stranding half a million in their homes in Bangladesh, officials said on Saturday. The landslides occurred near Habiganj district town, some 200 km (125 miles) northeast of the capital Dhaka Saturday, burying all six members of a family. Officials said the situation had worsened at three other nearby districts, with some 500,000 people stranded at their homes as the rivers Surma and Khusiara, flowing into Bangladesh from northeastern India, burst their banks following incessant rains over the last four days.

The refugees from the SWAT valley may also be in dire trouble.

July 3

BBC - At least 10 militants have died after missiles were fired by a suspected US drone aircraft at a Taliban target in Pakistan, intelligence officials say. Unnamed officials said it was an attack on a militant training facility in the South Waziristan area. It took place in an area on the Afghan border controlled by Pakistan's top Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

They're still not big fans of the U.S., but Barack Obama is a big improvement over W. from the poll:

Most Pakistanis now see the Pakistani Taliban as well as al Qaeda as a critical threat to the country–a major shift from 18 months ago–and support the government and army in their fight in the Swat Valley against the Pakistani Taliban. An overwhelming majority think that Taliban groups who seek to overthrow the Afghan government should not be allowed to have bases in Pakistan.

But given Sharif's numbers, this makes the tie of his to the Taliban important to make:

Asked about the nation’s leaders, a large majority–68 percent–views President Zardari unfavorably (very, 50%), but–unlike the recent past–there are multiple national leaders whom most do view favorably. Prime Minister Gilani is seems untarred by negative views of Zardari and gets favorable ratings from 80 percent of Pakistanis. The restored Chief Justice Chaudry is very popular (82%), and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif is extremely popular (87%). The leader most associated with the Pakistani Taliban, Maulana Sufi Mohammad, is viewed positively by only 18 percent of Pakistanis.

July 2

BBC - A court in the Indian capital, Delhi, has ruled that homosexual intercourse between consenting adults is not a criminal act.

The ruling overturns a 148-year-old colonial law which describes a same-sex relationship as an "unnatural offence".

Homosexual acts were punishable by a 10-year prison sentence.

Many people in India regard same-sex relationships as illegitimate. Rights groups have long argued that the law contravened human rights.

The court said that a statute in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which defines homosexual acts as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" and made them illegal, was an "antithesis of the right to equality".

July 1

AFP - Nepal's anti-corruption authority has come up with a novel solution to rampant bribe-taking at the country's only international airport - the pocketless trouser. The authority said it was issuing the new, bribe-proof garment to all airport officials after uncovering widespread corruption at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport.

"We sent a team to observe the growing complaints about the behaviour of airport authorities and workers towards travellers and we discovered that the reports were true," a spokesman for the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), Ishwori Prasad Paudyal, said. "So we decided that airport officials should be given trousers with no pockets. We have directed the ministry of civil aviation to implement our order as soon as possible," he said. "We believe this will help curb the irregularities."

Paudyal said CIAA investigators had observed theft as well as bribe-taking by airport officials, who would lose their jobs if the situation did not improve. His comments came a day after Nepal's new Prime Minister Madhav Mumar Nepal expressed fears that corruption was tarnishing the airport's reputation.

Huma Yusuf | June 30

CSM Media Roundup - Taliban militants in North Waziristan, a tribal region bordering Afghanistan, have ended a peace agreement with the Pakistani government. This development jeopardizes the military's plan to isolate and target the Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan, a neighboring tribal district.

A shura, or council, on Monday decided to call off the agreement – brokered with Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur in February 2008 – because the government has failed to meet the Taliban's demands that the Pakistani Army withdraw from the region and the government put an end to US-sanctioned drone attacks, reports the BBC. A Taliban spokesman added that militants would now "carry out attacks on military targets in the region until the army left and US drones strikes were halted."

The agreement with Mr. Bahadur was meant to divide Taliban forces in the area. The Pakistani Army is waging an offensive against Mr. Mehsud in South Waziristan, and, under the agreement, Bahadur would not join Mehsud in battling Pakistani forces.

The termination of the peace agreement comes a day after militants ambushed an Army convoy, leaving 23 soldiers dead and 35 wounded, reports The Times of London.

New Delhi | June 26

DPA - Indian security forces are planning to use the world's hottest chilli powder in non-lethal hand grenades to control riots and in counter-insurgency operations, a news report said Friday.

Scientists in the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) were working on a project to use Bhut Jolokia, in the non-lethal hand grenades, the Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper reported.

Defence scientist RB Srivastava, said the DRDO would use the chilli in different applications, including one to make hand-grenades that would act as an alternative to tear gas.

The authorities were also planning to coat fences of army bases near reserve forests with Bhut Jolokia to keep rogue elephants away.

Grown in the north-eastern state of Nagaland, Bhut Jolokia is about 1,000 times more spicy than the common chilli and twice as fiery as the Red Savina, a Mexican variety.

John Lichfield | Paris | June 26

The Independent - Families of 11 engineers murdered in Karachi in 2002 point finger of blame at French government

A political scandal is gathering pace over claims that 11 French submarine engineers were murdered in a bomb attack in Karachi seven years ago to punish France for the non-payment of arms contract "commissions" to senior Pakistani officials.

Lawyers for the French victims' families believe the attack, allegedly carried out by Islamist terrorists, was in fact part of a web of financial chicanery and political manoeuvring which may yet severely embarrass senior figures, including the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari.

Bangkok | June 25

AFP - Thailand's election commission has approved a new political party set up by the "Yellow Shirt" protest movement which blockaded Bangkok's airports last year, a spokesman for the body has said.

Calling themselves the New Politics Party, the group formerly known as the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) had posted its papers with the Election Commission three weeks ago after three years of street-level activism.

"The commissioners have now approved the registration of the New Politics Party. It's a unanimous decision as the submitted documents were considered to fully comply with the law," said commission spokesman Ruengroj Chomsueb.

The party must now find 5,000 members and set up four regional offices within one year, he said.

Pauk Tait | Islamabad | June 22

Thousands leave Waziristan before new Pakistan battle

More than 40,000 Pakistanis are moving even before a military offensive begins in the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan and are headed for communities already stretched to the limit, officials said on Monday.

Nearly 2 million people have fled fighting in northwest Pakistan, most since early May when the military began an offensive against Taliban insurgents, prompting the United Nations to launch an appeal for $543 million in aid to avert a long-term humanitarian crisis.

** Pakistan faces challenge of cementing victory against Taliban(pic)
** Taliban gains money, al-Qaida finances recovering
** Unclear if Pakistan offensive serves US
** Pakistan says Swat push nears end as clashes flare

William Maclean | London | June 19

Reuters - Under pressure in his Pakistan enclaves, Osama bin Laden is facing a familiar quandary: Where to go next? The answer is unlikely to be Yemen or Somalia, despite their new prominence as regional al Qaeda sanctuaries.

U.S. drone attacks and a looming Pakistan army offensive against one of al Qaeda's main allies in a northwestern tribal area have stirred speculation that bin Laden's men are seeking a less risky refuge for their anti-Western campaign.

But simply leaving Pakistan's remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) could expose the world's most wanted man and his entourage of planners and bodyguards to satellite detection and the curious gaze of a local population of uncertain loyalty.

Related thread: Yemen could be "another Afghanistan" -EU official

Pakistani journalist Nadeem Paracha, in a superbly referenced post on The Dawn Blog, takes his colleagues in the Pakistani media to task for their self-serving coddling of Islamic extremists.

It is a rather stunning experience watching certain TV talk show hosts, journalists and assorted ‘experts’ continuing to find newer and more bizarre ways to stick to an obviously reactionary and, if I may, paranoid line in this respect, especially at a time when a majority of Pakistanis, including well known religious scholars, have started to freely exhibit anger and bitterness towards phenomenon like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Saeed Shah | Islamabad | June 18

McClatchy - As Pakistan pursues delicate negotiations before launching a major military operation in South Waziristan, the United States launched a drone strike Thursday that could offend a warlord the government here is trying to win over, analysts said.

The bombing exposed the divergent priorities of Washington and Islamabad. The United States strongly backs the Pakistani offensive announced Sunday against warlord Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Washington also wants to destroy the leadership of the Afghan Taliban and its Pakistani allies, however, some of whom are potential allies for the Pakistani government.

One such potential ally, who just came under attack, is warlord Maulvi Nazir, whom Pakistan is courting in hopes he'll stay out of the fight, according to a senior Pakistani security official who declined to be identified as he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue.

Mehsud is also seeking a pact with Nazir, however, in what officials and militants described as a fierce competition with the government.

Gareth Porter | Washington | June 16

Asia Times - The United States Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by remote-controlled unmanned Predator drones in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that managers of the drone attack programs have been using the total secrecy surrounding the program to hide abuses and high civilian casualties.

Intelligence analysts have been unable to obtain either the list of military targets of the drone strikes or the actual results in terms of al-Qaeda or civilians killed, according to a Washington source familiar with internal discussion of the drone strike program. The source insisted on not being identified because of the extreme sensitivity of the issue.

"They can't find out anything about the program," the source told Inter Press Service (IPS). That has made it impossible for other government agencies to judge its real consequences, according to the source.

Also see: Pentagon wavers on release of report on Afghan attack

Kamran Haider | Islamabad | June 15

Reuters - Pakistan braced for militant reprisals on Monday as the army conducted softening-up operations ahead of an assault on the stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, one of al Qaeda's main allies.

Military experts see the showdown in remote South Waziristan as a possible Waterloo for al Qaeda and its allies as the government has demonstrated a fighting spirit hitherto lacking in Pakistan.

"We continue to fight until the last Taliban, militant, enemy of Pakistan is flushed out of Pakistan," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told police in Islamabad on Monday.

Extra police roadblocks caused unusually long traffic tailbacks in the capital on Monday morning as Rehman feared more bomb attacks like those that killed eight people in Dera Ismail Khan on Sunday and nine in a Peshawar hotel last week.

U.S. officials say they believe the Pakistan army has started a big push into Mehsud's mountainous redoubt, and on Sunday Awais Ahmed Ghani, governor of North West Frontier Province, confirmed an operation had been ordered.

It is hard to judge what is happening in Pakistan, the only news comes from the govt and its militant body count.

Gareth Porter | Washington | June 12

IPS - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by remote-controlled unmanned predator drones in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that managers of the drone attacks programmes have been using the total secrecy surrounding the programme to hide abuses and high civilian casualties.

Intelligence analysts have been unable to obtain either the list of military targets of the drone strikes or the actual results in terms of al Qaeda or civilians killed, according to a Washington source familiar with internal discussion of the drone strike programme. The source insisted on not being identified because of the extreme sensitivity of the issue.

"They can’t find out anything about the programme," the source told IPS. That has made it impossible for other government agencies to judge its real consequences, according to the source.

Since early 2009, Barack Obama administration officials have been claiming that the predator attacks in Pakistan have killed nine of 20 top al Qaeda officials, but they have refused to disclose how many civilians have been killed in the strikes.

In April, The News, a newspaper in Lahore, Pakistan, published figures provided by Pakistani officials indicating that 687 civilians have been killed along with 14 al Qaeda leaders in some 60 drone strikes since January 2008 – just over 50 civilians killed for every al Qaeda leader.

A paper published this week by the influential pro-military Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) criticising the Obama administration’s use of drone attacks in Pakistan says U.S. officials "vehemently dispute" the Pakistani figures but offers no further data on the programme.

Mark Tran | June 11

The Guardian - Cash shortages and bottlenecks in delivering supplies to people uprooted by fighting in Pakistan's Swat valley have triggered the biggest humanitarian funding crisis in a decade, relief organisations warn today.

A group of nine international aid groups including ActionAid, Islamic Relief and Oxfam said efforts to help more than 1 million victims of the fighting were in jeopardy. The agencies face a cash shortfall of more than £26m.

"This is the worst funding crisis we've faced in over a decade for a major ­humanitarian emergency. Some 2.5 million people have fled their homes," said Jane Cocking, Oxfam's humanitarian director. "One month into this emergency, Oxfam is £4m short and will have to turn our backs on some of the world's most ­vulnerable people."

Irfan Ashraf & Salman Masood | Peshawar | June 9

NYT - Militants opened fire on security guards and rushed a small truck packed with explosives through the gates of a five-star hotel in this northwestern city on Friday, detonating a large bomb in the parking lot and killing at least 11 people and wounding 55, Pakistani officials.

The blast, which left a crater six feet deep and 15 feet wide, was powerful enough to be heard for miles, witnesses said. Television images showed parts of the hotel badly damaged by the blast and wounded people, with blood soaked clothes, being helped out of the smoke filled lobby of the hotel, the Pearl Continental, one of the few in the city that cater to Western visitors.

I'm not a particular fan of Foreign Affairs, but this list of recommended reading on Pakistani politics is solid:

• Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military. By Husain Haqqani
  This timely book by the veteran Pakistani journalist Husain Haqqani -- who was recently appointed Pakistani ambassador to the United States -- offers insights into the often puzzling links between the military and the Islamists, exposing the supposed "khaki bulwark against extremism" as the actual facilitator and beneficiary of radical Islamism. Haqqani shows how the Pakistani state has played the Hindu, or India, card in order to unify a multiethnic polity around an Islamic national identity. In the process, the military has sponsored and supported Islamist proxies both to nullify demands for democratic representation and to balance regional threats emanating from India in the east and a traditionally irredentist Afghanistan in the west. This historically entrenched coalition between the mosque and military, Haqqani points out, continues to pose a serious threat to regional and international security.

That ongoing tensions between Pakistan and India present a serious obstacle to long-term peace and stability in the region is well known. In addition to straining relations between two nuclear powers (Pakistan and India), the dispute over Kashmir resulted in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) supporting Taliban and possibly al Qaeda militants in the region as a "strategic asset" in their struggles with India. This resulted in the blowback we see today, as militants shed any pretense of control by the ISI and began taking over Pakistani villages and declaring Shari'a rule.

As such, diplomats and international security experts have been long saying that an important part of a successful strategy in the Af-Pak region is to heal old wounds between Pakistan and India. While this will not come easily, it's good to see that Pakistan President Zardari is making the important move of extending a hand to India:

Nicholas Schmidle asks, Can the U.S. really trust Nawaz Sharif?. Looking at Sharif's past - a messy mix of political strongarming and kowtowing to radical Islamists - and his recent return to the political scene, Schmidle wonders whether or not American politicians are playing with fire by giving Sharif so much attention.

But as much as Sharif has been playing coy with the U.S. lately, his actions speak louder than his words. Take, for instance, his recent opposition to the use of drones in fighting the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal regions - one of the most effective tools in the war to date. What does Sharif say?

Biswajyoti Das | Guwahati, India | June 8

Reuters -

India will deploy thousands of additional troops and build airstrips along its remote northeastern border with China, in a sign of persisting wariness between the two countries despite growing business ties.

India and China fought a brief war over their 3,500 km (2,200 mile) Himalayan border in 1962, and both sides claim the other is occupying big but largely uninhabited chunks of their territory.

Although India and China have signed a treaty to maintain "peace and tranquility" along the disputed frontier and agreed to find a political solution to the row, talks have made little progress.

Last year, the army said Chinese soldiers had crossed the border in Arunachal Pradesh state illegally and entered their territory, urging the government to deploy more troops.

"Two army divisions comprising 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers each will be deployed along the border in Arunachal," said J.J. Singh, the governor of the remote state.

Pakistan has been hit hard by Taliban militants and is under close scrutiny by the world community. Under this pressure, the army and the government have acted swiftly to secure peace and stability, and protecting Pakistan's culture and way of life.

The tide is turning in Pakistan, and the army has turned the tables on Taliban militants, but the fight is not close to over. Speaking yesterday, Chief of Army Staff Gen. Kayani noted the success of the Pakistan army in turning around the situation in Swat, and that the military would keep pressure on Taliban forces until all safety was returned.

SUMMARY: A/S State EAP nominee Kurt Campbell will have his confirmation hearing before SFRC Asia subc. chair Jim Webb next Tuesday morning, 6/10. Rumors of "issues" are dispelled.

That pesky rumor about N. Korean nuclear assistance to Burma has been around for a couple of years, but lately it's been coming around a lot.

Informed folks can't talk explicitly, but do say they've not been shown evidence of direct NK-Burma nuclear plant activity, such as happened with Syria. Nuclear technology discussion? Ummm...another matter.

So confirmation would add further pressure on China, Russia to really cooperate with "containing" the DPRK nuclear threat, currently defined by the US as proliferation.

But after hearing for the umpteenth time lately that we should check-out what N. Korea is doing in the nuclear arena with the charmers in Burma, we did, asking a senior government official about it just this morning, in fact.

The response, brief and to the point, was that this is an "unsubstantiated rumor".

Now would Sherlock Holmes think he was actually being told it might be true, because, after all, said senior government official didn't reply that the whole thing is balderdash, don't make a fool of yourself?

We will confess to the temptation, but were saved, for today, at least, with an informed source who said that while the facts which HAVE been briefed cannot be discussed, it would be accurate to say that no facts have been briefed on any DPRK nuclear plant (a la Syria) to Burma.

And, the source added, while one would "highly doubt" the DPRK has done that, WERE any such facts to be briefed, that would indeed be a very big deal.

Having carefully led us through the briar patch, however, the source went on to note that it's long been on public record that Burma and N. Korea have extended military ties and sales, including a military cooperation agreement, and, of course, that Russia has supplied Burma with a nuclear power plant.

Accordingly, "it's not hard to imagine North Korean nuclear technology talks with Burma."

Oh oh...wait...what are you trying to tell us?

Sigh...

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON A NEW BEGINNING

Cairo University
Cairo, Egypt

1:10 P.M. (Local)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. And together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I'm grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. And I'm also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum. (Applause.)