"President Biden has had warm and productive early conversations with his counterparts in Australia, India, and Japan, and looks forward to engaging even more directly with our partners in the Indo-Pacific as soon as possible," a senior administration official told PTI.
"Militants operating out of Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to threaten Afghan stability as well as stoke tensions between Pakistan and India," Gen Votel said.
Expressing grave concern over a US nuclear-powered submarine sustaining damage in the disputed South China Sea, China on Friday demanded Washington to reveal the details and the location of the accident and blamed America's frequent air and naval sorties in the Indo-Pacific to assert the "freedom of navigation" as the "root cause" of the incident.
Conflicting reports have emerged about the fate of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is believed to have been grievously injured in a coalition air strike in March.
The military used a GBU-43 bomb -- which weighs a staggering 9,525 kg -- and the radius from the blast is believed to more than 300 metres.
Vikram J Singh, the highest-ranking Indian American at the Pentagon is quitting his administration job to head up the national security division at the Center for American Progess -- a Washington, DC progressive think tank with close links to President Obama -- which has at its helm another Indian American, Neera Tanden.
The high-tech capabilities of America's weaponry system have not been compromised due to the cyber hacking emanating from China, the Pentagon said on Wednesday amid a report that Chinese hackers breached the designs of critical US weapons systems.
Dismissing news reports as totally absurd, the US has denied that it has moved some 34 war ships around Mumbai, where President Barack Obama would arrive on the wee hours of Saturday, the Pentagon has said.
The Pentagon is gearing up for a three-day attack on Syria, with a heavy barrage of missile strikes followed by more attacks on targets that were missed to destroy in the opening salvos, a leading United States newspaper reported on Sunday.
China on Thursday declined to comment on reports that the debris of its Long March 5B rocket, which last week launched the core module of the country's space station, is set to re-enter the earth's atmosphere this weekend, amid concerns that it could cause damage if it crashes in civilian areas.
The terror group vowed to avenge his death.
The US Congress could certify just 12 Electoral College votes on Wednesday before pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol, interrupting a joint session of Congress where lawmakers were set to certify President-elect Joe Biden's win.
Qureshi said the matter will be taken up during Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's visit to the country on September 5.
WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, has not yet responded to the demand made by the US last week to return all classified leaked documents on Afghan war, Pentagon and State Department officials have said.
The US maintained normal diplomatic relations with the government in Taiwan until 1979, when then-President Jimmy Carter abruptly cut off formal ties with Taipei and recognised the Communist regime in Beijing.
This week's collection of unbelievably unusual images from across the world
The Pentagon has said Russia was supplying air defence system to the Ukrainian separatists believed to have shot down the Malaysian airliner earlier this month killing all of the nearly 300 people on board.
The fate of Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was reportedly targetted during airstrikes last weekend in Iraq, is still not known.
'India is still a small market but whatever we do, we do it with full focus.'
A surveillance American drone in the Arabian Gulf was intercepted and attacked by Iranian jets earlier in November, the Pentagon has said. "I can confirm that on November 1, at approximately 4.50 am Eastern Daylight Time, an unarmed, unmanned MQ-1 US military aircraft conducting routine surveillance over the Arabian Gulf was intercepted by Iranian Su-25 Frogfoot aircraft and was fired upon with guns," said Pentagon press secretary George Little.
The Pentagon has notified the Congress about its decision to reimburse $688 million to Pakistan, under Coalition Support Fund (CSF), which is cost of providing support for some 140,000 troops stationed at the Afghan-Pak border.
Indians at large harbour a notion that their country is cherrypicking out of the American basket of goodies, but the policymakers in Delhi and the political leadership are well aware that it can only be a pipe dream since a military alliance with a superpower is a profound irrevocable commitment, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Chinese experts estimate that the new US administration is 'at the crossroads of how to re-manage and control' Sino-American differences and strategic divergences and Biden's bottom line is that the US would have 'extreme competition with China, but won't allow competition to develop into conflict',' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
"Last night in Afghanistan, US special operations joined Afghan commandos from the first special operations battalion in a full mission exercise demonstrating a night air assault. This was an Afghan plan, an Afghan-led mission," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told media persons.
Breaking its silence on its tumbling space rocket, whose debris is expected to fall on Earth this weekend, China said most of it would be burnt during re-entry and it is "highly unlikely" to cause any damage on the ground.
The Pentagon has praised India's significant contribution in the peaceful development of Afghanistan, aimed at securing a stable region and facilitating economic corridors into Central Asia.
A US military investigation has recommended disciplinary actions against culprits involved in the Quran burning incident in Afghanistan early this year, the Pentagon has said.
'I don't sense that China wants that kind of conflict or would support that'
Dr S Amer Latif, a senior Pentagon policy wonk, on leave as a Visiting Fellow with the Wadhwani Chair in United States-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies -- a leading Washington, DC think tank -- has said the civilian bureaucracy with the Indian ministry of defense "is a significant impediment to close US-India military ties."
Slated to be in India on December 8, Carter would travel to Japan, Bahrain, Israel, Italy and Great Britain before returning to the US on December 16. This is for the first time that an outgoing American Defence Secretary has included India in his itinerary for the final overseas trip.
A casual clearance sale purchase has yielded a cache of remarkable photos never publicly seen before, all depicting the clean up operation in New York following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. The images, taken from overhead and on the ground, show workers and heavy machinery moving rubble from the base of the World Trade Center in the days and weeks following 9/11. The photographer is believed to be a man who was one of many tasked with cleaning up the site. Jason Scott, an American archivist and historian, said on Twitter he was given a cache of about 2,400 photos found on rotting CDRs. He then made them public on photo-sharing site Flickr.
Like China, India too should connect the dots and move ahead with a long-term perspective in Afghanistan, advises Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The 119 nearly identical construction sites, that could potentially house powerful weapons capable of reaching the American mainland, are similar to those seen at existing launch facilities for China's arsenal of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, the report said.
United States forces are poised to deploy pint-sized drones, small enough to fit into soldier's rucksack, but packed with tiny explosive warheads enough to blast targets with pinpoint accuracy.
The United States has said it will share with India transparently the results of its probe into the naval ship shooting incident that killed an Indian fisherman in the United Arab Emirates waters, even as the survivors disputed the Pentagon's claim that they were forewarned.
The Pentagon insisted that the United States naval ship had issued several warning to a fishing boat in the Persian Gulf before it fired shots killing an Indian fisherman and injuring three others.
Biden's authorisation of 5,000 troops in his statement on Saturday included 1,000 who are already on the ground in Afghanistan, according to a defence official. A battalion of 1,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division were redirected to Kabul, instead of their original standby position in Kuwait.
The US intends first to cripple the Afghan government financially through sanctions, freezing of assets, denial of access to international banking, etc, and then proceed to do pretty much what it wants to do with scant regard for Afghanistan's sovereignty, predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Democratic Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi condemned Trump's reported habit of affecting an Indian accent to imitate Modi.
Top American Senators have asked Pentagon to develop a closer defence relationship with India, while emphasising that it is in the interest of both the US and India to continue building a strategic and military culture of cooperation between the two countries.
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