Britain said on Sunday it was hopeful the United Nations Security Council will deliver a resolution against North Korea that includes tougher financial sanctions, after the isolated state’s nuclear test last week.
“There is a genuine world concern, and hopefully a consensus will come from that,” Ann Taylor, British Minister for International Defense and Security, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday on the sidelines of a regional defense conference.

Pakistani forces battled militants in South Waziristan on the Afghan border on Sunday as a government official said an offensive in the Swat valley could be over in two or three days.
Pakistani forces have undertaken their most concerted offensive against an expanding Taliban insurgency that has raised fears for the nuclear-armed U.S. ally’s stability and the safety of its nuclear arsenal.
The focus of the fighting has been the former tourist destination of Swat, 120 km (80 miles) northwest of Islamabad, which the Taliban virtually took as the government alternated …

Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility on Thursday for a suicide gun and bomb attack in the city of Lahore the previous day that killed 24 people and wounded nearly 300.
The government said the attack in a high-security area where a police headquarters, emergency services building and a military intelligence office are located, was revenge for an offensive against the Taliban in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad.
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South Korea and the United States raised the military alert level for the peninsula on Thursday after the communist North warned the truce ending the Korean War was dead and it was ready to attack.
North Korea ramped up tensions this week with a series of provocations rarely seen since the 1950-53 Korean War, including war threats, missile launches and a nuclear test that puts it closer to having an atomic bomb.
The joint command for the 28,500 U.S. troops that support South Korea’s 670,000 soldiers has raised its alert a …

Israel’s air force on Thursday wrapped up a large-scale four-day exercise which simulated its ability to defend against missile and jet strikes from Syria and Iran, a military official said.
The exercise was aimed at testing the air force’s ability to counter rocket and missile attacks from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and archfoe Iran, as well as the infiltration of jets overland, the official told AFP.
This is the first time the Israeli army has simulated strikes from the Islamic republic, located more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) away, he said.

Somali pirates in speedboats opened fire Monday on two cargo ships in the latest hijacking attempts in the notorious Gulf of Aden. Another band of brigands freed a food aid freighter but only after receiving a $100,000 “reward” from Somali businessmen. The latest attack occurred at midday when pirates fired shots at a Chinese-owned, Panama-flagged cargo ship, the MV New Legend Honor, said Cmdr. Chris Davies, from NATO’s maritime headquarters in England.
Two NATO warships — one Canadian, the other British — scrambled helicopters in defense, Davies said. No damage was …

John Solecki, the head of the UN refugee agency’s office in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, was found on Saturday night by the side of a road near Quetta, the provincial capital, with his hands and feet bound, pleading: “Help me, help me!”
Ethnic Baluch separatists had earlier claimed responsibility for the abduction and at one point threatened to kill Mr Solecki — the highest-profile Westerner to be kidnapped in Pakistan since Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002. News of Mr Solecki’s release came …

British troops began their formal withdrawal from southern Iraq Tuesday, “marking the beginning of the end of the UK’s six-year combat mission in Iraq,” the Ministry of Defence announced.
The remaining 4,000 or so British troops in the sector will leave by summer, a ministry spokesman told CNN.
The spokesman declined to be named in line with MoD policy.
“You won’t now see hundreds of troops coming out of Iraq every day, (but) this is the start of the end for British forces — a period that will take until the end of …

At least 48 people were killed and 150 injured when a suicide bomber detonated explosives during Friday prayers at a mosque in the Khyber region of northwest Pakistan, according to news reports from the area and residents.
Tariq Hayat , the chief administrator of the region close to the Afghanistan border, told Geo TV that “so far we have counted 48 bodies.”
Residents said that about 250 to 300 worshipers were in the mosque at the time of the attack and that the death toll could rise sharply.

After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year.
In interviews, several Taliban fighters based in the border region said preparations for the anticipated influx of American troops were already being made. A number of new, younger commanders have been preparing to step up a campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks to greet the Americans, the fighters said.
The …