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 …

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 …

A North Korean rocket appears to have passed over Japan, the Japanese government said on Sunday, having dropped booster stages to the east and west of the country.
“The projectile launched from North Korea today appears to have passed over towards the Pacific,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
North Korea has said it was putting a satellite into space and but regional powers say Pyongyang is testing a missile designed to carry a warhead to U.S. territory.

North Korea defied the United States, China and a series of United Nations resolutions by launching a rocket on Sunday that the country said was designed to propel a satellite into space, but that much of the world viewed as an effort to prove it is edging toward the capability to shoot a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile.
North Korea launched the rocket at 11:30 a.m. local time, or 10:30 NYTime said the office of the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak. Early reports from the Japanese prime minister’s office …

The U.S. military helped plan and finance a recent attack on a Ugandan rebel group which went awry, with fleeing fighters conducting a series of massacres that killed up to 900 civilians, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
The Uganda-led operation targeted the brutal rebel group called Lord’s Resistance Army, which had been hiding in a Congolese national park. The rebel leaders escaped and small group of fighters rampaged through towns in northeastern Congo, hacking, burning, shooting and clubbing civilians to death, the newspaper said.

Israeli warplanes bombed a weapons production facility in Gaza on Thursday after militants fired a rocket at Israel, in violence that defied the efforts of a visiting U.S. peace envoy to reinforce a ceasefire.
There were no reports of injuries from the predawn Israeli strike in the town of Rafah, along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Witnesses and Hamas Islamists said a metal foundry was damaged.
Moments earlier, a militant group with links to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement claimed responsibility for firing a rocket at southern Israel late on Wednesday.

Israeli airstrikes have targeted the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, as part of Israel’s response to an attack on one of its frontier patrols on Tuesday.
Residents near the town of Rafah fled as missiles hit tunnels through which Israel says militants smuggle arms.
The strikes came ahead of US envoy George Mitchell’s visit to promote a permanent Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Both sides declared ceasefires on 17 and 18 January to end Israel’s three-week offensive on Gaza.

Pressure is building on Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tiger rebels to protect thousands of civilians caught up in the fighting on the island.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has expressed deep concern over the fate of the civilians – the UN says dozens are dead or injured.
And the European Union has asked the government to ensure that the civilians are spared in the fighting.
Sri Lanka’s army has pushed the rebels from their strongholds.

Mounting violence between rebel fighters and government troops along northern Sri Lanka has prompted U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to call for the safety of civilians as humanitarian groups try to provide aid to some 250,000 people trapped in the region.
“The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of civilians caught in intensified fighting in the Vanni region of Sri Lanka,” a spokesman for Ban said in a statement Monday.

The Congolese government is broadcasting messages to Rwandan rebels within its borders demanding they surrender, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s communications minister told CNN on Sunday.
“We would … prefer a voluntary disarmament,” Mende Omalanga said. “We are campaigning for them to put [down] their guns.”
So far, about 160 of the estimated 6,500 Rwandan rebels in Congo’s eastern regions have heeded the call and laid down their arms, he said.