The Political Conundrum!

In January, two Super Hornets collided over the Persian Gulf -- an accident that spared all three aviators aboard but destroyed the planes. The Navy now says that one of the pilots, who was filling in as wingman , misread his position and reported that he was eight nautical miles away from his actual location.

An official of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs fabricated his colorful past as a decorated Vietnam War veteran and used faked war wounds to collect disability benefits, authorities have said.

Retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones, a former top commander of NATO, is expected to be named National Security Adviser for the Obama White House.

The upper chamber of the Czech Parliament on Thursday approved a deal with Washington to accept a U.S. missile defense installation.

Iraq's parliament on Nov. 27 endorsed a landmark military pact that will govern some 150,000 U.S. Soldiers assigned to 400 bases across the country beginning Dec. 31. Here are the main points of the deal, spelled out in the official English version of the 24-page agreement.

Commandos ended a siege of the luxury Oberoi hotel on Friday while other forces rappelled from helicopters to storm a besieged Jewish center, two days after a chain of militant attacks across India's financial center left at least 143 people dead and the city in panic.

In the aftermath of this week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Indian government officials and media outlets have already begun pointing a finger at Islamic militants in neighboring Pakistan -- particularly an organization known as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET). The LET has been designated by the U.S. government as a proscribed foreign terrorist organization -- along with its accused political wing, Jamat-ud-Dawa (JUD).

Earlier this evening, I spoke via telephone with the official representative of JUD, Abdullah Muntazir, to discuss the situation in Mumbai and mounting allegations of involvement by LET and/or Pakistani Islamists. Muntazir strongly denied these charges, referring to the attacks as an "internal problem" for India. He repeatedly insisted to me, "we have nothing to do with it", and blamed Indian "propaganda" for "divert[ing] the attention of the public media" --- which he described as "their usual practice." Interestingly, during our conversation, Muntazir went even further and actually condemned the events that have taken place in Mumbai as needless "carnage": "Islam does not permit killing civilian people." He added, "I don't think that this is a legitimate tactic."