News stories by David Elkins, page 2

Two days after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder outlined the statutory justifications for 'targeted killings', civil liberties groups here continue to question the legality of the Obama administration's policy, particularly as it applies to the rights and very lives of both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals.

After weeks of political pressure from the U.S., Egyptian officials announced Wednesday that the remaining employees of two U.S. government-supported organisations facing a criminal investigation would be permitted to leave the country.

U.S. lawmakers have introduced a new package of unilateral sanctions targeting Iran that would challenge U.S. President Obama's discretionary authority to enforce such sanctions and would impose comprehensive restrictions on foreign entities that ship, refine or provide any other related services to Iran's energy sector.

Escalating violence in Abyei, the largest of several towns in the disputed borders between North and South Sudan, has displaced thousands of people and, according to U.S. officials, is threatening the viability of both the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and the soon-to-be independence of Southern Sudan, set for Jul. 9, as the potential for civil war between the two sides grows.

As the War Powers Act, which purportedly authorised U.S. President Barack Obama to wage war in Libya for 60 days without Congressional approval, expires Friday, experts here continue to question the strategic focus of the NATO-led operation, with pressure mounting from Capitol Hill on the Obama administration to lay out what its desired end game in Libya will be.

In a much-anticipated speech on the Middle East and North Africa on Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama broadly outlined an ambitious set of U.S.-guided initiatives intended to reinforce economic and political prosperity, democratic reforms and, most emphatically, self-determination for the millions of protestors throughout the region who have taken to the streets over the past six months.

On the eve of a much-anticipated address by President Barack Obama on U.S. policy in the Middle East, a new survey suggests that disillusionment with both Obama and Washington's approaches to the region are once again on the rise throughout the Muslim world.

Amid high-level U.S. congressional delegations to evaluate developments in Iraq, a growing number of voices here, from both the Barack Obama administration and members of Congress, are concerned about a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country by December 2011 — a deadline set forth in the supposedly inviolable Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraqi governments back in 2008.

Far from concluding the war on terror, both Western and Muslim-majority countries - many emerging or still embroiled in months of popular protests — will continue to face a threat from extremist ideology after the United States' decade-long campaign to capture or kill Osama bin Laden has come to an end, most analysts say.

The official Yemeni opposition group, the Joint Meetings Party (JMP), has announced it will sign a deal brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Wednesday which will officially transfer President Ali Abdullah Saleh's powers, temporarily, to his vice president Abd al-Rab Mansur al Hadi.