The delegations from the US and Iran head to Islamabad on Friday, carrying a ceasefire that is already fraying, a Strait that is technically open and practically closed, and a negotiating agenda that would challenge even parties actually negotiating in good faith, which these groups are not. Prem Panicker continues his must read blog on the Iran War.
Police said Imam Maulama Akonjee and Thara Uddin, 64, were walking home from prayers on Saturday when they were approached from behind by a male and were shot.
Oscar Morel from Brooklyn was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon by New York police.
A New York cleric, who tipped off al Qaeda-trained militant Najibullah Zazi as he plotted to bomb the city's subways last year, has pleaded guilty to lying to US federal agents about his contacts with the terror suspect.
Raising fears over the growing threat of home-grown extremism, three Americans, including two women, have been charged in separate cases of plotting terror strikes on United States soil using "weapons of mass destruction" and of travelling to Pakistan to fight against American forces.
Several Sikh, Hindu and South Asian rights groups have asked the United States justice department to probe the "discriminatory" surveillance of Muslims by the New York police department, saying such religious profiling unfairly "stigmatises" the community members and "breeds distrust".
Images from stories that shaped the week gone by.
Al Qaeda's reclusive chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who played a central role in the 9/11 terror attacks and later created the group's regional affiliate in the Indian subcontinent, was killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan's Kabul, in the biggest blow to the global terror network since killing of its founder Osama bin Laden in 2011 in Pakistan.
'It is important to destroy, to undermine, to debunk the narrative of ISIS,' Olivier Roy -- one of the world's leading experts on radical Islam -- tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel in an exclusive interview.
Europe will have to make some hard choices if it wishes to take on the militant group responsible for the horrible attacks in Paris.