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"While neither guided bomb nor armored vehicle, a gray oblong water pump sticking out from the brush along a remote dirt road is intended to be just as clear a sign of the United States’ efforts to stop the spread of the Islamic State."

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"Responding to the recent violence with typical policies to counter violent extremism could make things far worse.'

"The Pentagon will expand the military’s mission along the southern border, sending nearly 300 additional active-duty troops there who will be authorized to have direct contact with migrants entering the United States to provide them food and shuttle them between locations, defense officials said Friday."

"Nobody has a dementia diagnosis yet, but the first hip and knee replacements are on the horizon. So are wheelchair ramps, sleep apnea breathing masks, grab bars on cell walls and, perhaps, dialysis. Hospice care is on the agenda."

"The United States and Turkey are negotiating a plan for their troops to jointly patrol a safe zone about 20 miles wide along Syria’s northeastern border with Turkey, according to officials from both countries."

"Syria’s opposition has pinned its hopes on a new constitution that could allow for political transition in a country devastated by civil war, as it struggles for relevance eight years after an uprising began to oust the Assad regime."

"The question facing the United States and other Western allies is how to deal with challenges in the Middle East without getting sucked into complex and costly civil wars."

"The Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka rank among the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history, and underscore the metastasising scourge of Islamist violence in Asia. Radical Islamist groups, some affiliated with larger extremist networks, have been quietly gaining influence in an arc of countries extending from the Maldivian to the Philippine archipelagos, and the threat they pose can no longer be ignored."

"The number of security contractors the military employs in Afghanistan is higher now than at any time since President Barack Obama declared an end to combat operations in the country in 2014, Defense Department documents show."

"The Pentagon is preparing to approve a loosening of rules that bar troops from interacting with migrants entering the United States, expanding the military’s involvement in President Trump’s operation along the southern border."

"America risks a catastrophic defeat if it doesn’t radically change the way it thinks about war."

"International support, considered critical to Afghanistan’s ability to govern, will evaporate if rights for women are not secured, inspector general John Sopko says."

"When ISIS claimed responsibility for the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka, it did so in Arabic and English—and in languages spoken in just a few regions across South Asia."

"A peace treaty to end more than 17 years of war in Afghanistan could usher in a new era of instability and erase many of the gains made by international reconstruction efforts, a key U.S. official cautioned Wednesday."

"The drug lab bombing campaign that was championed as a game-changer didn’t have the intended effect of hitting the Taliban’s purse and was probably a waste of resources."

"Since the US left the Iran Deal and began exerting pressure on Tehran via sanctions, there have been tensions between the US and pro-Iranian groups in Syria and Iraq. This includes the Hashd al-Shaabi (PMU), a group of mostly Shi’ite paramilitaries in Iraq that are now part of the Iraqi Security Forces."

"Trump tweeted that 'Mexico’s Soldiers recently pulled guns on our National Guard Soldiers, probably as a diversionary tactic for drug smugglers on the Border,' but he didn’t offer any support for the drug-smuggling claim.

"Sri Lankan investigators are being assisted by a team of F.B.I. agents who flew into Colombo amid a sense of urgency. The American ambassador to Sri Lanka, Alaina Teplitz, said there were 'ongoing terrorist plots' and Mr. Wijewardene said 'there could be still a few people out there.' He urged Sri Lankans to remain vigilant."

"Before he spent five years in prison for murdering a suspected al-Qaeda detainee, Michael Behenna was a rising military officer from a prominent law enforcement family."

"Ever since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and sponsored separatists in the Donbas, Eastern Europe has collectively wondered: 'Where will the Kremlin strike next?'"

"People in Sri Lanka are experiencing a second day without access to some of the most popular social media sites within the country, after the government shut down the services in the wake of a terror attack that killed nearly 300 people and injured hundreds on Easter Sunday."

"Authorities here said an international terror group likely supported an obscure local Islamist group in carrying out a series of bombings that killed at least 321 people on Easter Sunday, weeks after the government had received warnings from the U.S. and India about a possible attack."

"Sri Lanka on Tuesday described the devastating string of bombings on Easter that killed 321 people as a response to the attack on two mosques in New Zealand last month."

"Eight separate bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels on Easter Sunday left 290 people dead and another 500 injured. A day after the coordinated explosions, which mostly targeted Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo, the names and stories of those who died are beginning to trickle out."