Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Obama, Pakistani PM to meet amid easing tensions

Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the State Department in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)







Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the State Department in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)







(AP) — In the rocky relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan, the mere fact that President Barack Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are sitting down together at the White House is seen as a sign of progress.

Few breakthroughs are expected on the numerous hot-button issues on their agenda Wednesday, including American drone strikes and Pakistan's alleged support for the Taliban. But officials in both countries are hoping to scale back tensions that escalated after the 2011 U.S. strike within Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden and last year's accidental killing of two dozen Pakistani troops in an American airstrike along the Afghan border.

"We want to find ways for our countries to cooperate, even as we have differences on some issues, and we want to make sure that the trajectory of this relationship is a positive one," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Obama and Sharif talked on the phone earlier this year, but they have never met in person. Sharif, who served two earlier stints as Pakistan's prime minister, has held face-to-face talks with Secretary of State John Kerry and was scheduled to meet with other top U.S. officials while in Washington this week.

Ahead of his talks with Obama, Sharif held a breakfast meeting Wednesday with Vice President Joe Biden. The White House said the two leaders discussed the importance of working together to combat terrorism and violent extremism, while strengthening regional security.

The prime minister's visit to the White House comes one day after Amnesty International released a report providing new details about the alleged victims of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, one of them a 68-year-old grandmother hit while farming with her grandchildren. In Pakistan, there is widespread belief that American drone strikes kill large numbers of civilians and Sharif is expected to raise the issue with Obama.

The White House responded to the Amnesty report by defending the drone program, with Carney saying U.S. counterterrorism operations "are precise, they are lawful and they are effective."

Also on the agenda for Wednesday's meeting will be Obama's looming decision on whether to keep any American troops in Afghanistan after the war there formally concludes at the end of next year. Ahead of the U.S. withdrawal, the U.S. is seeking to push through a peace deal with the Taliban and Afghan government.

Pakistan is seen as key to this process because of its historical connection to the Taliban. It helped the group grab power in Afghanistan in 1996 and is widely believed to have maintained ties as a hedge against neighbor and nuclear rival India — an allegation denied by Islamabad.

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Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-23-United%20States-Pakistan/id-3000355fb0db4738bb1e29f4d9e213e7
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Robert DeNiro Plugs “The Family” In Tokyo

Showing some love to his Japanese fan base, Robert De Niro attended a promotional event for “The Family” at the 26th Tokyo International Film Festival today (October 22).


Joined by his wife Grace Hightower, the “Meet the Parents” star was pleased with the warm reception he received at Roppongi Hills Theater ahead of the film’s big premiere.


Robert told press, “Japanese fans are so well behaved. At festivals in the West people are usually screaming and going crazy, but everyone is so polite here.”


As for his experience making “The Family,” DeNiro shared, “It was easy hard-work or hard easy-work, depending on how you look at it. It was simple and fun.”






Source: http://celebrity-gossip.net/family/robert-deniro-plugs-%E2%80%9C-family%E2%80%9D-tokyo-947194
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Samsung Galaxy S 4 with Snapdragon 800 and faster LTE treks to Europe

Remember how there was an LTE-A-equipped Samsung Galaxy S 4 with a juicy Snapdragon 800 CPU for South Korea and a lesser Exynos 5 or Snapdragon 600 version for everywhere else? Well, it looks like the more desirable former variant is about to migrate to Europe, judging by a GT-I9506 product page on ...


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Judge declines to halt 'Obamacare' insurance subsidies (reuters)

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Apple posts full iPad & Mac keynote video, in case you missed it!

If for whatever reason you missed out on the iPad & Mac keynote from earlier, you can now head on over to the Apple website to relive the event in all its glory as Apple has posted it in in its entirety.

That said though, if you're not wanting to check it out in your browser you can hold off for a bit longer and wait for it to iTunes plus, Apple should also be uploading it to iTunes as well shortly.


    






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The Fix: How Jon Stewart became President Obama’s biggest problem (Washington Post)

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Category: eddie aikau   oakland raiders   chicago fire   Anna Gunn   Al Jazeera America  

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Mac Pro launches in December for $3,000: 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon CPU, 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD

Apple's latest Mac Pro rolls off United States assembly lines and into consumers hands in December for $3,000. The base model features a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon CPU ("with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz"), 12GB DRAM, two AMD FirePro D300 GPUs, and a 256GB SSD. Apple senior VP of worldwide marketing ...


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Tags: how i met your mother   Seaside Heights