Oil could fall to $50 a barrel (Chris Stanton, October 02. 2008, The National)
Merrill Lynch has slashed its lower-end forecast for 2009 crude prices, saying in a report that oil could trade as low as US$50 a barrel – a level not seen for three years.Such a collapse in prices would wreak havoc on many oil-exporting economies and derail efforts to develop alternative energy and tap crude from unconventional sources, analysts said.
Eastern Germany has gone to the wolves (David Crossland, 9/02/08, The National)
Germany’s former communist east is suffering the most dramatic population decline of any region in Europe in what researchers are calling an unstoppable exodus that may eventually turn much of the area into a nature reserve.The fall, caused by the departure of skilled workers and a dwindling birth rate, has had a devastating impact on towns and villages with entire districts transformed into wastelands of closed shops, boarded-up houses and deserted apartment blocks.
“Eastern Germany is the biggest demographic crisis region in Europe according to our indicators,” said Steffen Kröhnert, the author of a recent study on European population trends by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.As people move away, wolves have started migrating into the east from Poland and the Czech Republic, and neo-Nazis have found growing support among young, poorly educated men left behind with few job prospects. Since East Germany united with the west in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the region’s population has fallen by 1.7 million people or 10 per cent, mainly because people migrated to the richer west in search of jobs as their inefficient economy collapsed.
Despite massive government subsidies, the decline is set to continue because of a sharp drop in births, and by 2030 as much as a third of the population may have deserted the east, the institute said. The region makes up about 30 per cent of Germany’s surface area.
Imagine the next president of the United States moving decisively to slow down the world’s population growth as it arcs from today’s 6.7 billion toward a predicted and perilous 9.2 billion by 2050.The cost to the U.S. Treasury could reach $1 billion a year. Worth it? Consider what a proactive U.S. global family planning effort might achieve.
+ By moderating population growth, there’d be some lessening of catastrophic food and water shortages afflicting less developed nations.
+ Global warming dangers wouldn’t rise quite so rapidly.
+ The rights and life prospects of literally millions of women around the globe might be enhanced.
+ Significant worldwide totals of abortions and infant deaths could be avoided.
+ Democracy and stability would be promoted worldwide as fewer nations faced the turmoil easily triggered by high birth rates creating population “bumps” of poor and resentful youth.
+ And with a clear, unequivocal U.S. lead, other countries and the United Nations might expand their international family planning assistance.
The Saudi-Syrian Cold War Unfolds in Tripoli (JOE MACARON, 10/03/08, Middle East Times)
The Cold War between Syria and Saudi Arabia playing itself out in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli is taking the Lebanese crisis into unchartered territories where all the microcosms of inter-Arab animosity are vying for power in Lebanon. [...][B]oth Saudi and Syrian regimes have one thing in common: a vague structure of security power not conducive to analyze the rationale behind their policies. Riyadh's political options are predictable and built on the premise of a Sunni-Shiite divide, while the Syrian leadership, existing in a more complex environment, muddled along in somewhat of a state of disarray since 2001, where a the political line followed by Damascus remains blurred.
Two blasts shocked Tripoli and Damascus last week, underlining a Salafist thin line stretching from the capital of north Lebanon all the way to the capital of Syria. Sunni extremism in Tripoli is a byproduct of the Syrian regime in some ways, since Damascus perceived the medieval city to be an extension of the Syrian heartland, as the late journalist Samir Kassir once observed. But it is hard also not to detect Saudi Arabia's hand in Tripoli.
Israelis Wary of a US Radar Base in the Negev (TIM MCGIRK AND AARON J. KLEIN, Oct. 02, 2008, TIME)
When a contingent of U.S. soldiers opens a radar facility on a mountaintop in the Negev desert next month, Israel will for the first time in its 60-year history have a permanent foreign military base on its soil. And despite the early warning that the American radar would provide if Iran launches a missile attack on Israel, some senior Israeli officials are nonetheless wary about its presence. Complained one top official, "It's a like a pair of golden handcuffs on Israel."From its mountain perch in Har Keren, the U.S. radar will be able to monitor the take-off of any aircraft or missile up to 1,500 miles away — giving Israel a vital extra 60-70 seconds to react if Iran fired a missile, Israeli military sources told TIME. Israel has its own radar system trained on Iran, but it's range is much shorter. Still, some see several drawbacks for Israel in the radar, and blame Defense Minister Ehud Barak for requesting its deployment in Israel without consulting anyone other than his chief of staff. Some in the upper echelons of the Israeli Defense Force fear that although the radar will enhance Israel's protection against Iran, it may also open up Israel's own military secrets to the Americans.
The radar will allow the U.S. to keep a close watch on anything moving in Israeli skies, "even a bee", says one top Israeli official who asked not to be identified. The U.S. may be a close ally, but Israel nonetheless has aviation secrets it would rather not share. "Even a husband and wife have a few things they'd like to keep from each other," explains this source. "Now we're standing without our clothes on in front of America."
Greener whites: Gel promises better cleaning at half the temperature of traditional powders (DAILY MAIL, 06th October 2008)
Proctor & Gamble says its new product, Ariel Excel Gel, can deliver perfect whites at half the temperature needed by traditional detergents.Launched under the slogan 'Cold is the new hot', the detergent claims consumers can save money on energy bills because it is effective at 15c.
The Sad Saga of American Democracy (Dr. Habib Siddiqui, 2008-09-10, Ovi)
There is no denying that terrorism has become an important phenomenon in our time and needs to be eradicated. Nothing can justify or excuse an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by hate groups, religious or ideological fundamentalists, private militia - or whether it is dressed up as a war of retaliation by a recognized government. As Arundhati Roy had argued, the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan was not revenge for New York and Washington; it was yet another act of terror against the people of the world. It is high time for the human race to dig into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern, to find a way out of this spiraling morass of terror and brutality that threatens us today.As is well-known a great nation simply can neither hide behind its past glory nor can it afford to behave irrationally and irresponsibly. It must weigh in pros against cons before every major action it takes. It also needs adhering to a higher moral compass to demand respectability of its actions and positions. Unfortunately, with her unlawful invasion, wanton murderous campaigns and destruction, and despicable records of human rights abuses and tortures in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay (rightly called the Gulag of our time), and willful loathing of international laws, America can no longer claim higher moral ground. With phony trials and exoneration of some accused U.S. service men that have committed Mai Lai type massacres, premeditated murders and gruesome tortures in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has lost that moral fortitude essential for sustaining an empire. She has exposed that no genocide, no murder, no torture, no abuse, no rape, nor any crime can be laid at her door. She is simply above the law. Her war criminals are untouchable by courts – foreign and domestic. In so doing she forgets that it took less than thirty years for the British Raj to collapse since the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919.
Obsessed with the all but nonexistent terrorists, America has forgotten some basics about what had made certain empires survive longer than others, and conversely, what made some to succumb to pre-mature death. She has miserably failed to learn from other's experiences, especially those of the Brits who had a long experience dating back at least to early 20th century in matters of dealing with terrorism in India and Ireland.
Nuclear fusion energy project could lead to limitless clean electricity (Richard Gray, 05/10/2008, BBC)
The power of the sun is to be recreated in a new £1 billion science project which aims to provide a clean and almost limitless source of energy.British scientists will this week begin work to create a nuclear fusion reactor, which will use the same powerful reactions that take place in the Sun to provide energy and, ultimately, electricity. [...]
Laser beams with enough power to light up every home in Britain for a few microseconds will be used to heat up the nuclear fuel to millions of degrees centigrade in order to trigger the reaction.
If successful, the reactor will be a prototype for future commercial power stations, providing a cleaner and safer replacement for conventional nuclear power stations, which use nuclear fission to produce energy
EU climate change cuts: Poland leads revolt over Russia fears (Michael Levitin, 03/10/2008, Daily Telegraph)
Poland has claimed that it has assembled enough votes to block a landmark EU climate change agreement after spearheading a revolt by Eastern European states that fear the package would increase their dependence on Russian natural gas supplies. [...]While viewed in Brussels as a necessary act of leadership in the climate change debate by Europe, the proposal has been criticised for granting an unfair advantage to the richer Western European nations.
In particular introducing a 100 per cent auction of carbon trading quotas by 2013 is likely to force the closure of heavy polluting coal power stations and force the Eastern states to build natural gas facilities that would buy Russian pipeline supplies.
Warsaw has vowed to avoid that prospect at all costs. "It's not the biggest success when you build up a blocking minority" said Miss Mackowiak. "It's when the minority sticks together to the very end.
Obama rejects terror link 'smear' (BBC, 10/05/08)
US Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has hit back at claims by his Republican rival that he associated with "terrorists".Mrs Palin said Senator Obama had been "palling around" with an ex-member of 1960s US-based militant group.
Mr Obama said the Republicans were out of touch and trying to distract voters from the real issues.
Pats get back to winning ways, 30-21 over 49ers (Greg Beacham, October 5, 2008, AP)
From Randy Moss' dynamic 66-yard touchdown catch to Kevin Faulk's score on a direct snap, the New England Patriots returned to their usual regular-season form in an unusual place.Faulk rushed for two scores, Matt Cassel had 259 yards passing and the Patriots won in San Francisco for the first time in franchise history, beating the 49ers 30-21 Sunday.
Moss had five catches for 111 yards for the Patriots (3-1), who returned from their bye week with a comprehensive effort that should erase the bad taste of the defending AFC champions' stunning blowout loss to Miami last month, which ended their 21-game regular-season winning streak.
In yet another well-balanced win -- this time a 17-10 decision against the Chargers -- the Dolphins took a major leap toward NFL legitimacy Sunday as they proved their previous win against the Patriots wasn't a fluke. [...]The defense, which was anchored by solid performances from linebacker Matt Roth, safety Yeremiah Bell and linebacker Joey Porter, held LaDainian Tomlinson to just 35 yards on 12 carries.
(2) LaDainian is done.
(3) The current iterations of the Colts, Chargers, and Pats are slowing up enough that they're ripe for the taking, but it's not clear that the up-and-coming AFC teams--Bills, Titans, Jacksonville, etc.--are ready to bump them off.
Palin's words carry racial tinge (DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, 10/05/08, AP)
By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.
MORE:
Weathermen: Home-grown US radicals (Joe Boyle, 10/05/08, BBC News)
On 8 October 1969, all that changed. A newly-formed group of left-wing extremists, dubbed the Weathermen, went on the rampage in a well-planned protest in Chicago - the so-called Days of Rage riots.A police station in the city was bombed, and protesters engaged police in combat on the streets. More than 250 of the rioters were arrested, and the FBI began to follow the movements of the Weathermen very closely. [...]
By the end of 1969 they decided to go underground and resort to bombing strategic targets - later changing their name in the process to the Weather Underground Organization.
From 1970 to 1975 the group bombed police stations, court and government buildings, and police cars.
In 1970 there were fatalities - a police officer died from his injuries after a pipe bomb was detonated in a San Francisco police station, while three of the group blew themselves up while building explosives in their New York apartment. [...]
The group's most audacious attacks came in 1971, when they bombed the US Capitol, and a year later when they attacked the Pentagon.
The group splintered in the mid-1970s and ceased to be regarded as a threat by the authorities.
Many of its members became prominent professionals in US public life.
Bernardine Dohrn, the author of the Declaration of War, is now a law lecturer. Her husband, Bill Ayers, lectures in education.
Both were implicated in the group's most serious attacks, but were never convicted.
During the late 1990s, Mr Obama served on the same charity board as Mr Ayers.
Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.
The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC.
Conquering the 'ewww' factor of the public potty (Elizabeth Landau, 10/03/08, CNN)
Most of us have them -- the personal ritual to deal with the "ick" of a public bathroom: wiping the seat with toilet paper, using a paper seat cover or even rolling up several pieces of toilet paper to create a thicker barrier between the skin and ... the unknown.
Public bathrooms may be teeming with bacteria, but the toilet seat is probably safe for sitting.But the toilet seat is actually the cleanest part of the bathroom, one expert says.
Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona who has studied restrooms and other germ-infested environments for more than 20 years, says that because of the care people take when they're about to sit, other parts of the bathroom are much more prone to delivering bacterial infections.
"One of the cleanest things in the bathrooms we find are the toilet seats," Gerba said. "I'd put my fanny on it any time -- unless it's wet; then you'd want to wipe it first."
Is This a 'Victory'? (Peter W. Galbraith, 10/23/08, NY Review of Books)
Al-Maliki's agenda is transparent. The Kurds and Sunnis are obstacles to the ruling coalition's ambitions for a Shiite Islamic state. Al-Maliki wants to eliminate the Sunni militia and contain the Kurds politically and geographically. America's interest in defeating al-Qaeda is far less important to him than the Shiite interest in not having a powerful Sunni military that could overthrow Iraq's new Shiite order. The Kurds are too secular, too Western, and too pro-American for the Shiites to share power comfortably with them.This should not be a surprise. Iran, not the US, is the most important ally of Iraq's ruling Shiite political parties. The largest party in al-Maliki's coalition is the SIIC, which was founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1982. By all accounts, Iran wields enormous influence within Iraq's ruling Shiite coalition and has an effective veto over Iraqi security policies. In 2005, Iran intervened in Iraq's constitutional deliberations to undo a Shiite–Kurdish agreement on Kurdistan's powers, only to relent after Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani made clear that there would be no constitution without the deal; many Iraqis have told me that one reason that the US and Iraq have been unable to agree on a new security arrangement is that Iran opposes anything of the kind.
Nor is al-Maliki a Western-style democrat, in spite of President Bush's attempts to portray him as just that. Rather, he is a Shiite militant from the hard-line Dawa Party. Before returning to Iraq in 2003, he had spent more than twenty years in exile in Iran and Syria. As late as 2002, State Department officials sought to exclude Dawa from a US-sponsored Iraqi opposition conference because of Dawa's historical links to terrorism, including a 1983 suicide bomb attack on the US embassy in Kuwait. (There is no basis for linking al-Maliki or other mainstream Dawa leaders to that attack.)
Al-Maliki is an accidental prime minister, having secured the job only after internecine Shiite rivalries (and Kurdish opposition) derailed more prominent candidates. The Bush administration knew so little about him that it initially had his first name wrong. He had never been considered important enough to meet the many senior US officials traipsing to Baghdad. But President Bush has embraced him as the embodiment of American values and goals in Iraq.
John McCain says that partly because of his persistent support of the surge, we are now winning the Iraq war. He defines victory as an Iraq that is a democratic ally. Yet he advocates continued US military support to an Iraqi government led by Shiite religious parties committed to the establishment of an Islamic republic. He takes a harder line on Iran than President Bush, but supports Iraqi factions that are Iran's closest allies in the Middle East. He praises the Awakening and but seems not to have realized that the Iraqi government is intent on crushing it. He has denounced the Obama-Biden plan for a decentralized state but has said nothing about how he would protect Iraq's Kurds, the only committed American allies in the country.
George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success—or a path to victory.
Vatican official attacks U.S. Democrats as “party of death” (Phil Stewart, 10/01/08, Reuters)
[N]ow that the Vatican’s highest court is led by an American, the former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, we can expect things to get more explicit in Vatican City — at least when when it comes to U.S. politics.Burke, who was named prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature in June, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the U.S. Democratic Party risked “transforming itself definitively into a party of death for its decisions on bioethical issues.” He then attacked two of the party’s most high profile Catholics — vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — for misrepresenting Church teaching on abortion.
He said Biden and Pelosi, “while presenting themselves as good Catholics, have presented Church doctrine on abortion in a false and tendentious way.” [...]
Burke said pro-life Democrats were “rare” and that it saddened him that the party that helped “our immigrant parents and grandparents” prosper in America had changed so much over the years.
Why Some Women Hate Sarah Palin (BELINDA LUSCOMBE, 10/03/08, TIME)
Ah, women, the consistently, tragically underestimated constituency. What the Democrats learned during the primaries and the Republicans might now be finding out the hard way, I learned at my very academic, well-regarded all-girls high school: that is never to discount the ability of women to open a robust, committed, well-thought-out vat of hatred for another girl.Women are weapons-grade haters. Hillary Clinton knows it. Palin knows it too. When women get their hate on, they don't just dislike, or find disfavor with, or sort of not really appreciate. They loathe - deeply, richly, sustainingly. I do not say this to disparage my gender; women also love in more or less the same way.
When men disagree, the steps to resolution are reasonably clear and unsophisticated. Acts of physical violence are visited upon one another's person or property, and the whole thing blows over. Women? Nu-unh. We savor the discord. We draw it out. We share our contempt with our friends, like a useful stock tip, or really good salsa. And then we all go hate together: a mutually encouraging group activity for when the book group gets quiet.
TDR Exclusive Interview: Peter Kreeft (William D. Aubin | Saturday, October 4, 2008, Dartmouth Review)
Editor’s note: Last spring, Boston College’s PeterKreeftvisited Dartmouth to give a talk honoring St. Catherine of Siena. Professor Kreeft teaches philosophy at Boston College and is the renowned author of over 45 books, including a Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Christianity for Modern Pagans, Making Choices, Fundamentals of the Faith, and Making Sense out of Suffering. He sat down with The Dartmouth Review at that point to discuss the role of religion on a college campus. [...]TDR Something I know you have discussed in your lectures and writing are the pitfalls of religious pluralism, as we understand the concept in modern America. What do you think of efforts and institutions that toss around terms like “pluralism” and “multi-faith”?
Kreeft My problem with pluralism is that it doesn’t exist. People who mouth the word most loudly are the farthest from being really pluralistic. They develop institutions and curriculums that have to hew to the party line of deconstructionism, relativism, feminism, etc. I have no problem at all with real pluralism; I think the ideal university would be radically pluralistic, a microcosm of the whole world.
TDR Debates between atheists and Christians are in vogue on college campuses today, yet there does not seem to exist a single case of conversion one way or the other that has resulted from such events. What is the benefit of engaging in theological arguments from your point of view, as a Christian apologist?
Kreeft When you wash clothes, you first put them in a hamper, and a hamper is not an airtight environment; it’s got little interstices where the air gets in. So you have to air the dirty laundry first before you put it in the washing machine. A debate airs the two sides out and exposes the logical problems of both sides. It doesn’t do the actual work of converting, but at least it gets the data out. It’s an educational enterprise.
TDR You’ve written that neither economics nor politics will exist in Heaven, as they are the creations not of God but of man. That said, do you believe either major political party in the United States has pushed an agenda that is closer to God’s law than the other?
Kreeft Well, no one of them is ideal. On some issues I tend to think that the Democrats have traditionally been closer: on ecology, on suspicion of war; but on the most important issues, namely abortion and individual responsibility, rather than trusting everything to the government, I think the Republicans are clearly closer to classical Christian political thought than the Democrats are today. I remember a survey in 1958, of the thirty most prestigious universities in America, asking the faculty, ‘Did you vote Republican or Democrat in the last election?’ Eighty-five percent voted Republican. The same study was repeated a few years ago, with almost exactly the same figures in reverse, somewhere in the eighty percent range were Democrats.
I asked myself the question, “Why?” And I think I figured out the answer. The most passionate public issue in the late 50s and early 60s was civil rights, and the Democrats were arguing, on the basis of a natural law ethic, that segregationist laws had to be changed. Republicans were saying no, it’s economically unfeasible. Today, the most passionate issue is abortion, and euthanasia, and now it’s the Republicans who are arguing on the basis of natural law that these things are wrong, and the Democrats are arguing against. So I guess academia naturally goes to the lowest ethical level. Professors should be expected to support moral monsters and tyrants.
Most of the tyrants of the 20th century had a lot of professors behind them. Pol Pot, the great Southeast Asian master of genocide, studied under Jean-Paul Sartre. John Dewey lauded Stalin. There was a Harvard sociologist who studied Hitler’s executioners. She paralleled level of education with willingness to support Hitler, and she thought there would be an inverse relationship; there was a direct proportion. The more educated you were, the more you tended to favor Hitler’s work and volunteer to do it.
To halt the bank tsunami, slash interest rates (Vince Cable, 10/05/08, Times of London)
Fortunately there are lessons to be learnt from previous financial tsunamis.The first relates to monetary policy. There is now a severe monetary squeeze taking place, even though official interest rates are negative in real terms in the United States and low elsewhere, including Britain. Banks are hoarding cash and trying to avoid all but the safest customers. After the disappearance of new mortgage lending, lines of credit are being pulled from companies and individuals.
History teaches us that interest rates should be slashed during a banking crisis to stave off deep recession. This has happened in the United States, but not in Britain. The approach of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, dictated by its mandate, is to balance deflationary against inflationary risks with, in practice, occasional small adjustments in interest rates. The committee is in danger of becoming irrelevant in an environment where short and medium-term inflationary risks are massively outweighed by the danger of a once-in-a-lifetime collapse of the financial system.
Central bank independence must be maintained – not least because, after the crisis has passed, intervention by governments could have big inflationary consequences. What is required is for the chancellor to write to the governor saying that on a temporary emergency basis the committee should assume a central role in countering the crisis with a large cut in interest rates. A big cut – conceivably as much as two percentage points – would have a big psychological impact on consumer and business confidence when it is most needed.
Second, a far-reaching approach is required for the banks. Hitherto the Bank has provided unlimited liquidity (at a penalty rate and against sound security). Beyond that, banking crises have been dealt with on an ad hoc basis with, now, two nationalisations, an officially orchestrated merger (Lloyds TSB/HBOS) and various takeovers (Alliance & Leicester by Santander; smaller building societies folded into Nationwide). That approach has been right. The danger, however, is that the collapse in investors’ confidence in banks could result in the remaining high street banks being picked off, one at a time, resulting in a succession of messy nationalisations or forced mergers.
There is a case for a more systematic approach. A good model for managing a banking crisis is Sweden. After the collapse in the property market in the early 1990s, not dissimilar from America and Britain today, the banks had insufficient capital and there was a confidence crisis. The focus was on recapitalising the banks. Debt-equity swaps and new equity issues were generated under a government-managed programme. The government either nationalised banks or acquired a stake in them. When the banks’ balance sheets were sufficiently robust and economic conditions had improved, the government sold its stake (and made money for the taxpayer).
Officials: Taliban Angry Over Alleged U.S. Strike (AP, October 05, 2008)
Two Pakistani intelligence officials said that over the weekend two people wounded in the attack died at a hospital in Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan. The officials sought anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.Based on information from informants and agents in the field, the intelligence officials said the Taliban appeared extra-perturbed over the latest strike. The anger was a signal that a senior militant may have been killed, but that has yet to be confirmed, the officials said.
The insurgents were moving aggressively in the area while using harsh language against locals, including calling them "saleable commodities" — a reference to people serving as government spies, the officials said.
Two local residents said Taliban fighters had warned people not to discuss the strike, including with the media, or to try inspecting the rubble at the site. The residents asked not to be named for fear of Taliban retaliation.
The strike in Mohammadkhel appeared to be the deadliest of 11 reported cross-border operations by U.S.-led forces since Aug. 20. The area is a stronghold of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran Taliban commander regarded by the U.S. as one of its most dangerous foes.
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