News headlines in July 2011, page 4

The Taliban leadership is ready to negotiate peace with the United States right now if Washington indicates its willingness to provide a timetable for complete withdrawal, according to a former Afghan prime minister who set up a secret meeting between a senior Taliban official and a U.S. general two years ago.

Britain has officially recognised Libya's main opposition group as the country's legitimate government, and asked all diplomats belonging to Muammar Gaddafi's government to leave the United Kingdom.

Bolivia and Chile will resume their dialogue on access to the Pacific Ocean from Bolivian territory, the president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Evo Morales, told reporters Wednesday.

'First, they bound my arms, and then they threw me on the ground face down. The interrogators pulled my head back by grabbing my hair and kept asking, 'Who are you?'

The recent gang-rape of a Buddhist nun and her expulsion from her sect have sparked a debate about the deep-rooted religious traditions and biases that foster discrimination and violence, especially against women, in this South Asian state.

For the last 40 years, the Muslim Brotherhood's united front has been the envy of Egypt's political opposition. But in the six months since the fall of the Mubarak regime, the Islamist group has been racked by unprecedented internal divisions.

Wealthy Pakistanis from the country’s northwestern region are leaving their hometowns permanently to settle in safer areas far from the war zone. Doctors and other professionals are joining the exodus.

Subhan Khatoon’s brand new home is nothing like the one that got washed away, along with all her worldly goods, in the 2010 monsoon floods that submerged a fifth of Pakistan and left 2,000 people dead.

Iranian leaders have tried to portray democracy movements in the Arab world as inspired by their 1979 Islamic revolution and predicted that Iran's regional support would grow as pro- Western dictators fell.

Amidst growing fears of a new fiscal crisis sparked by a possible U.S. debt default next week, a key Republican-led Congressional committee Wednesday approved deep cuts in foreign aid and contributions to the United Nations and other multilateral institutions next year.