NEW YORK – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he intends to “confound” critics and skeptics and make peace with the Palestinians — but he said he needs a partner.

Netanyahu challenged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to sit down with him. If he does, the Israeli leader said a peace agreement could be reached in a year.

Netanyahu’s message to Israelis, Americans and the wider world two days after patching up relations with President Barack Obama was that he became prime minister for a second time to take “political risks” for real peace.

He told several hundred people at the Council on Foreign Relations that it’s time to stop putting conditions on direct Israeli-Palestinian talks and start negotiations “now, next week, in two weeks.”

“We’re ready to make far-reaching concessions today, and the best way to test that is to start negotiations,” Netanyahu said.

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WASHINGTON – U.S. officials boast that al-Qaida has never been weaker, its upper ranks decimated because of the stepped-up drone attacks in Pakistan and special operations raids in Afghanistan.

At the same time, they warn, in seeming contradiction: An even greater number of well-trained terrorists are setting their sights on the United States.

Across the remote tribal lands between Afghanistan and Pakistan where terror groups hide, U.S. officials say they’ve seen a fusion of al-Qaida and others targeted by U.S. forces, including the Haqqani group and the Pakistani Taliban, who formerly focused only on their local areas.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the groups have become a “synergy of terrorist groups” with “an expanding desire to kill Americans.” He was speaking last week at the Aspen Institute security forum in Colorado.

At the same forum, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter warned that the “troubling alignment” extends all the way to Yemen and Africa. The dispersed network is making terror plots harder to spot and prevent, he said.

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Mlita, south Lebanon; and Tel Aviv, Israel –
A camouflage-wearing fighter from Lebanon’s militant Shiite Hezbollah crouches, his rifle raised, ready to provide covering fire for a comrade who holds steel cutters and kneels before coils of barbed wire.

The scene could be a Hezbollah squad preparing to attack an Israeli outpost, but these fighters in the Lebanese town of Mlita are plastic dummies. The display is one feature in a tourist village set up by the Iran-backed group that officially opened today to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Israel’s troop withdrawal from south Lebanon. (More on the Mlita village below.)

While Lebanese hail the Israeli withdrawal as a victory, many Israelis are still divided over whether the move improved security or was a sign of weakness that encouraged more militant attacks on Israel. Critics say the withdrawal opened the way for the second Palestinian intifada four months later, the month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006, and the recent Gaza war.

“What we ended up doing was empowering, emboldening, and energizing Iranian-backed proxies to intensify their unconditional fight against Israel’s existence,” says Dan Diker, a foreign policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Today, as both sides mark 10 years since the withdrawal, Israelis and Lebanese alike are jittery about a fresh war breaking out – one that Hezbollah’s leaders say would change not just the dynamic between the two neighbors, but the shape of the Middle East.

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MONROVIA, Calif. – If NASA’s exploration of Mars were summed up in a bumper sticker, it would read: “Follow the water.”

Well, we’ve found the water — ice was discovered by the Phoenix lander in 2008. Now what?

It’s time to search again for signs of life, scientists say, something they haven’t done since 1976. This time, they want to bring Martian rock and soil samples back to Earth. Here, they could be analyzed for fossilized traces of alien bacteria, or chemical or biological clues that could only be explained by something that was alive.

Such a venture as now outlined would be a three-part act, cost as much as $10 billion and take several years to complete. NASA can’t afford it on its own so it recently joined the European Space Agency to map out a shared project.

Space policy experts think the timing is right despite the risks and hefty price tag.

“We’re about out of things to do on Mars other than a sample return,” said George Washington University space scholar John Logsdon. “It is an extremely expensive undertaking, probably the most expensive robotic mission to Mars and clearly the most complex.”

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NAYPYITAW (Reuters) –
A splinter faction of Myanmar’s biggest opposition party said Thursday it would form its own political party following the boycott of this year’s election by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

The NLD was effectively disbanded at midnight Thursday when the registration deadline expired, but a senior member told Reuters a breakaway group would form a new opposition party to be called the National Democracy Force (NDF).

NLD executives voted unanimously on March 29 to shun the much-derided polls because unjust election laws barred many of its senior figures from running.

The NLD boycott came six days after Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner detained for 15 of the past 21 years because of her pro-democracy fight, said she “would not dream” of registering the NLD for the election.

The comment was widely interpreted as a veiled instruction to NLD members ahead of a party vote on the issue, however, NLD insiders said some party members feared it would play into the hands of Myanmar’s military rulers.

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