POLITICS-U.S.: 9/11 Probe Calls for National Security Overhaul

Capping 18 months of work, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission released its 567-page report here Thursday, and challenged President George W Bush and Congress to urgently make sweeping changes to the structure of the U.S. intelligence community.

POLITICS-U.S.: Neo-Cons Target Terrorism By Reviving Communism Foe

A bipartisan group of 41 mainly neo-conservative foreign-policy hawks has launched the third Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) whose previous two incarnations mobilised public support for rolling back Soviet-led communism but whose new enemy will be ''global terrorism''.

POLITICS-U.S.: Realists and Neo-Cons Renew Battle on Iran

A new round in the ongoing battle between realists and neo-conservative and other hawks over Iran policy got underway here Monday as a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published a new report urging Washington to engage Tehran on a selected range of issues of mutual concern.

RIGHTS: Asia Tops Economic Freedom Survey

Hong Kong, followed closely by Singapore, retains the highest rating in the latest edition of the 'Economic Freedom of the World' annual report released here Thursday by the Cato Institute and more than 50 other libertarian think tanks around the world.

POLITICS-IRAN: Corruption Eats Into Roots of Society

Graft has become so widespread in Iran that the government's anti-corruption efforts have been criticised as being insufficient to stem the growing malaise in the country, which many Iranians say is getting worse by the day.

POLITICS-U.S.: CIA Becomes Political Football

The imminent choice by U.S. President George W Bush of a new director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), blasted Friday for ''groupthink'' and incompetence by a key Congressional committee, is fast becoming the major new battleground between the administration's hawks and realists.

IRAQ: Arms Suppliers Scramble to Feed Hungry Market

When the 15-member U.N. Security Council legitimised the U.S.-imposed interim government in Baghdad in June, the five-page unanimous resolution carried a provision little publicised in the media: the lifting of a 14-year arms embargo on Iraq.

GULF: Iran Sends Confusing Signals in Tit for Tat Marine Actions

A series of escalating spats in the Gulf waters between Iran, on one hand, and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, on the other, has cast a large shadow over relations between these countries.