Prominent women and tribesmen from the North West Frontier Province delivered the same hostile message that she'd heard the two preceding days from students and journalists: Pakistanis aren't ready to endorse American friendship despite an eight-year-old anti-terrorism alliance between the countries and a multi-billion-dollar new U.S. aid package.

"We are fighting a war that is imposed on us. It's not our war. It is your war," journalist Asma Shirazi told Clinton during the women's meeting. "You had one 9-11. We are having daily 9-11s in Pakistan."

"The problem is that we want American dollars but we, as a country, hate Americans," Abida Hussain, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, told McClatchy. "We're not perfect, but we want the Americans to be perfect."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today said that he is encouraged by news that an agreement has been reached to resolve the political crisis in Honduras that began when President José Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power in June.

A growing number of Russians believe their country does not need democracy, a nationwide survey by one of Russia's leading polling agencies suggests.

China and Russia signed a framework agreement Tuesday that could see a steady flow of natural gas to energy-hungry China from its resource-rich neighbor. It was one of numerous trade and military agreements signed during a state visit by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the countries overcome traditional mistrust to push ahead mutual economic interests.

Other deals included Chinese companies making investments in construction industry facilities in Russia, Zhukov said. "Naturally, the Chinese are interested in getting (ownership) stakes," he said without giving any details.

an agreement on advance notification for planned ballistic missile launches by either country.

Tougher sanctions against Iran that the U.S. and its allies are considering to pressure it over its nuclear program might only strengthen its hard-line president and the Revolutionary Guard, boosting the elite force's economic and political muscle, experts warn.

North Korea looks across the heavily armed border to its South Korean neighbour, backed by a nuclear superpower, the United States.

With the nuclear powers China and Russia on its other border, one of the world's most isolated and friendless countries believes it has a strong and compelling logic for wanting its own atomic bombs.

This may be a deeply authoritarian and impoverished place, but at least some of its citizens appear genuinely proud and defiant. Upon whatever it is based, it is that strand of legitimacy, as much as the physical controls, that has helped make North Korea so resilient for so long.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."

World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations,"

Pope Benedict has warned that a form of colonialism continues to blight Africa.

the developed world continued to export materialism - which he called "toxic spiritual rubbish" - to the continent.

the Catholic Church is already growing faster there than in any other part of the world, nearly trebling in size to 150 million followers over 30 years.

Hundreds of thousands will take part in massive parades by civilians and the military, who have been drilled so thoroughly that soldiers are only permitted to blink once every 40 seconds. A dazzling half-hour firework display, using 300,000 shells, will surpass even the pyrotechnic splendour of last year's Olympics, organisers promise.As tanks roll through the heart of the city, and fighter planes zoom overhead, the People's Liberation Army will reveal 52 new types of weapon, including its latest nuclear missiles – all made in China.

"Chavez once again shot his mouth off," said Jorge Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign minister and respected writer on the Latin American left.Castaneda, speaking at the Nixon Center in Washington Wednesday, said that Zelaya apparently was on his way to the U.N. Mission in Tegucigalpa when Chavez took to the airwaves and urged Hondurans to greet their returning president.After Chavez's broadcasts, Zelaya was unable to get there, and in the heat of the moment fled to the Brazilian embassy, Castaneda said.Castaneda, who's no friend of Chavez, ended Mexico's decades-old foreign policy of not criticizing human rights abuses in Cuba and its financial patron, Venezuela. Castaneda is considered center-left and is one of the region's most prolific political scientists.

Brazil had no warning of Zelaya's return to Honduras three months after his June 28 ouster, in which he was unceremoniously flown out of the country and dumped in a Costa Rican airport wearing his pajamas.

A leading Honduran businessman has put forth a plan that calls for Zelaya to serve out the rest of his term with limited powers, and the Organization of American States and the Roman Catholic Church are serving as emissaries between Micheletti and Zelaya in an effort to break the stalemate.

the limitations of Obama's style and approach

His administration, he promised, would do its best to revive the world's economy, to address climate change, to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and to bring peace to Israel and Palestine. These are all admirable aspirations, and it is perhaps unreasonable to hope that the president might have admitted that the United States has been largely responsible for each of these problems.

Barack Obama is increasingly coming to look like Lyndon B Johnson, a brilliantly gifted politician whose ambition to build a "great society" was sacrificed because of the war in Vietnam. The heart of the Obama approach is now clear. He genuinely wants to move away from the frozen folly of the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century, but he is not willing to take the political risk of acknowledging America's responsibility for the problems he wants to solve.