NSC

Kosovo, one of the smallest territories in Europe, is casting a large shadow on the diplomatic landscape as the deadline nears for determining its international status. "My sense is that the clock is running out on the issue," says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. National Security Council director for European Affairs. The United Nations set a deadline of today for resolving the political status of the Serbian province, which has been internationally administered since NATO ousted the forces of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 to halt an attack on Kosovo's mainly ethnic Albanian population.

The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials. The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack. Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.