By Douglas Holtz-Eakin
The young drop coverage to avoid higher premiums
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
The Mexican ambassador compared rival Mexican drug gangs responsible for 35,000 deaths to businessmen pursing "hostile takeovers," as he complained about U.S. attempts to label murderous cartels as terrorists.
Pakistan's government has made little progress in the past year in battling militants, and there is "no clear path toward defeating the insurgency" in the country, according to a White House report that comes as the U.S. struggles to build it's often shaky relationship with Islamabad.
A "blood money" deal to free a CIA contractor who killed two Pakistani men removes a major thorn in relations between the United States and Pakistan, but bruising from the incident and disagreements over Afghanistan mean the alliance will likely remain stormy.
A CIA contractor accused of murdering two Pakistani men walked out of a Lahore prison Wednesday after the families of the dead men "pardoned" him after receiving more than $2 million in blood money, officials said.
A CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistani men was freed from prison on Wednesday after the United States paid $2.34 million in "blood money" to the victims' families, Pakistani officials said.
Pakistan and the United States cannot afford any downturn in their relationship, President Asif Ali Zardari told the new U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan on Monday amid a dispute over a detained American CIA contractor.
Global food prices have reached their highest point in 20 years and could increase further because of rising oil prices stemming from the unrest in Libya and the Mideast, a U.N. agency warned Thursday.
A Pakistani court said Thursday it would proceed with the trial of an American CIA contractor arrested for fatally shooting two Pakistanis, but it held off on charging him, lawyers for both sides said. They said the court also said there was no evidence that Raymond Allen Davis had diplomatic immunity as his lawyers and Washington insist.
An American CIA employee accused of murdering two Pakistanis appeared handcuffed in a Pakistani court on Friday, where he refused to sign a charge sheet after claiming diplomatic immunity, officials said.
A former CIA senior officer is urging the Obama administration to pay "blood money" to the families of two Pakistani men who were killed by a CIA contractor in order to win his freedom from Pakistani authorities holding him in a murder probe.
An Iraqi al Qaeda operative was believed to be one of 15 militants killed in two U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
An American jailed in Pakistan for the fatal shooting of two armed men was working secretly for the CIA and scouting a neighborhood when he was arrested, a disclosure likely to further frustrate U.S. efforts to free the man and strain relations between the two countries.
Legal analysts in Pakistan's government widely believe that an American detained in the killing of two Pakistanis has diplomatic immunity but that a court should decide his fate, an official said Tuesday.
Pakistan will tell a court that most of its legal experts believe a detained American has diplomatic immunity, but will leave it to a judge to rule on his status, an official said Tuesday — a sign that Islamabad is trying to give the U.S. an opening to free the man while avoiding domestic backlash.
Pakistan's standoff with Washington over a jailed U.S. Embassy worker will not thwart talks between the two countries and Afghanistan, a Pakistani government spokesman said Sunday.
"Instead, let us look for renewal."
Mr. Davis last month, as Pakistani media reported that the United States paid more than $2 million in "blood money" to the relatives of the dead men.
