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November 21, 2009
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September 25, 2009

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  • Iran Admits to Secret Second Nuclear Plant

    BY: Nico Hines | The London Times

    Tehran has sent a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna confessing that they have concealed the existence of the nuclear facility, which has been under American surveillance for years.

  • India's Hidden War Heats Up

    BY: Jason Overdorf | Global Post

    Simmering for nearly a decade, India's low-level war against communist revolutionaries has been fought mostly under the radar, since the battleground lies in the remote jungles of some of the country's least developed states -- like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa.

  • In New World Order, Global Forum Expands Permanently

    BY: Edmund L. Andrews | The New York Times

    President Obama will announce Friday that the once elite club of rich industrial nations known as the Group of 7 will be permanently replaced as a global forum for economic policy by the much broader Group of 20 that includes China, Brazil, India and other fast-growing developing countries, administration officials said Thursday.

  • Hariri Has Second Try at Coalition Building

    BY: Mitchell Prothero | The National

    The incoming Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, yesterday began a second attempt to form a national unity cabinet after seeing his chances bolstered by an unexpected meeting between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Syria.

  • Egypt's Opposition Aims to Undermine Gamal Mubarak

    BY: Rachelle Kliger | The Media Line

    A leading Egyptian opposition movement is planning to take the president’s son to court, questioning the sources of his wealth and the legality of his current official positions.

  • Afghans Call On U.S. for Deal With Insurgents

    BY: Sayed Karim | The National

    There will be no peace in Afghanistan until the government strikes deals with senior insurgent leaders, say members of one of the country’s biggest political movements.

  • American Helped Bomb Somalia Base, Web Site Says

    BY: Jeffrey Gettleman | The New York Times

    Somali Web site is claiming that one of the suicide bombers who attacked an African Union base last week in Somalia was from the United States, which, if true, would make him the second known American to carry out a suicide attack.

  • Austrians Shudder, Hungarians Cheer as Frontiers Fall

    BY: Colin Woodward | The Christian Science Monitor

    When neighboring Hungary joined the joint European customs union in 2007, erasing the joint frontier, authorities in Austria moved to block the roads.

  • Europe's Center-Left Parties Stuck in a Dead End

    BY: Manfred Ertel, Hans-Jürgen Schlamp and Stefan Simons | Der Spiegel

    Europe's social democratic parties are in the deepest crisis of their history as conservative parties co-opt their principles and far-left parties steal their traditional supporters. The glory days of Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder's "third way" seem like the distant past.

  • Turkish Military Supports the Government's Kurdish Initiative

    BY: Emrullah Uslu | Eurasia Daily Monitor

    As Turkey has recently concentrated on the debate over whether the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) Kurdish initiative to end the long running campaign of violence, the two key actors in the conflict, the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have entered the debate.

  • Siemens Fills Russia’s Need for High-Speed Train

    BY: Andrew E. Kramer | The New York Times

    This December, high-speed trains designed by the German conglomerate and adapted for Russian winters will ply the rails between St. Petersburg and Moscow. But Siemens hopes their final destination will be the last laggard of the high-speed age: the United States.

  • Kazakhstan: Nazarbayev President-For-Life Trial Balloon Draws Lots of Darts

    BY: Joanna Lillis | Eurasianet

    Kazakhstan is buzzing with speculation in the wake of a proposal floated earlier in September to make Nursultan Nazarbayev president for life. The timing of the suggestion is just a little awkward for Astana, given that Kazakhstan will soon take over the chair of Europe’s leading democratization group -- the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

  • Burma's Junta Intensifies Bid For Unification

    The Washington Post

    The Burmese government has been trying to unify the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1948, a crusade that has taken precedence over all other concerns, including democracy, and is still the driving force behind the current government led by Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

  • Time Running Out for Sri Lanka's IDPs

    BY: Bart Beeson and Annalise Romoser | World Politics Review

    Most of the internally displaced people (IDPs) have been living in the camps since May, when they fled the intense fighting that marked the final battle between government forces and the insurgent group known as the Tamil Tigers. Publicly, the Sri Lankan government has committed to returning IDPs to their homes by November of this year, and several thousand people have been released from camps to live with relatives.

  • Mao’s Grandson Rises in Chinese Military

    BY: Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times

    He enjoys generous helpings of red braised pork, collects Chinese fans and keeps an unapologetically patriotic blog. Now Mao Xinyu, the 39-year-old grandson and only surviving male heir of Mao, appears to have become the youngest major general in the People’s Liberation Army, according to the state media.

  • Anti-U.S. Wave Imperiling Efforts in Pakistan, Officials Say

    BY: Karen DeYoung and Pamela Constable | The Washington Post

    A new wave of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan has slowed the arrival of hundreds of U.S. civilian and military officials charged with implementing assistance programs, undermined cooperation in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and put American lives at risk, according to officials from both countries.

  • North Korea Revealed by Those Who Know It

    BY: John M. Glionna | Los Angeles Times

    A magazine based in Japan offers an intimate look inside North Korea. Its reporters are North Korean farmers and factory workers who risk their lives to portray life inside their reclusive homeland.

  • Suu-Kyi Backs U.S. Move to Open Talks With Junta

    BY: Andrew Buncombe | The Independent

    The US is set to engage directly with Burma's military rulers in an effort to push for democratic reforms while maintaining sanctions – a move that has the support of the imprisoned opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

  • A Latin American Arms Race?

    BY: Nathaniel Foote | Diplomatic Courier

    In the wake of a U.S.-Colombian military deal, Hugo Chavez has raised the stakes with a large arms deal and the announcement of a nuclear program.

  • Robot Wars: The Hal Factor

    BY: Simon Roughneen | ISN Security Watch

    Rapid technological developments are changing how wars are fought, but as Predator drones and ground robots are supplemented by bigger, better and deadlier upgrades, moral and ethical implications will need to be assessed.

  • Four Things You Must Know About the Global Puzzle

    BY: Philip Stephens | Financial Times

    From New York to Pittsburgh you could hear the crunching and grinding of geopolitical plates. The latest jamborees at the United Nations and the Group of 20 leave the new global landscape still very much a work in progress. Some of the contours, though, stand in sharper relief.

  • Surreal Drama at UN General Assembly

    BY: Iason Athanasiadis | Global Post

    The United Nations at dawn on the morning of the opening session of the General Assembly resembles a Hollywood disaster movie: the tense quiet over Manhattan ahead of an apocalyptic catastrophe or an alien assault.

  • Reagan's Missile Defense Triumph

    BY: Andrew Nagorski | The Washington Post

    If Ronald Reagan was watching the news from afar last week, he had to be smiling. Not because of President Obama's decision to abandon the planned deployment of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

  • Two First Steps on Nuclear Weapons

    BY: Mikhail Gorbachev | The New York Times

    Other nations must come away from the United Nations meeting believing that America and Russia are moving toward verifiable nuclear arms reductions.

  • A Long-Term Fix for Medium-Range Arms

    BY: Kenneth Adelman | The New York Times

    In contrast to most arms control issues, in this case the prescription is simple: Open a treaty that would outlaw medium-range missiles to all countries, and urge them to sign it.

  • Toward Peace in the Middle East

    BY: Aaron David Miller | Los Angeles Times

    Watching Tuesday's three-way meeting in New York between Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas reminded me that when breakthroughs in Arab-Israeli peacemaking come, they come with unforeseen and unpredictable urgency driven by big men and big events.

  • At the U.N., Terrorism Pays

    BY: Ehud Barak | The Wall Street Journal

    This week the United Nation's Human Rights Council produced a 600-page report alleging that Israel carried out war crimes in Gaza and asserts that Israel's motives for its operation against Hamas nine months ago were purely political. I am outraged by these accusations.

  • The Unseen Bias in Middle East Reporting

    BY: Gilead Ini | The Christian Science Monitor

    Journalists defy common sense when they call Fatah 'moderate' and Netanyahu's administration 'hardline'.

  • Why Do Mideast States Fear Secularism?

    BY: Ghassan Rubeiz | The Daily Star

    Iran is a country that has gone very far in subjecting governance and societal institutions to the crushing influence of religious leadership, and to the clutches of organized clerical power.

  • The Afghan Imperative

    BY: David Brooks | The New York Times

    Fighting the Afghan war the easy way hasn’t worked. Only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success.

  • Commit to Afghanistan or Get Out

    BY: Kori Schake | The Wall Street Journal

    We shouldn't send Americans to fight and die if we're not in it to win.

  • Afghan Scenarios

    BY: Steve Coll | The New Yorker

    When Margaret Warner interviewed Hillary Clinton on Newshour on Monday, Clinton said that no matter what the Obama Administration decided about its Afghan strategy or the numbers of troops required, it would not send new troops until the disputed Afghan presidential election is on a clear path to resolution. The logic here is easy to understand.

  • Hard Truths About Uzbek Cotton

    BY: Tom Harkin | Los Angeles Times

    As youngsters in the United States return to school, children in Uzbekistan will be returning to the fields.

  • Germany's Non-War

    BY: Georg Diez | International Herald Tribune

    The government refuses to call our 'police work' in Afghanistan a war, and the people feel free to ignore it.

  • Stay the Course

    BY: Carlos Alberto Montaner | Miami Herald

    Roberto Micheletti, designated president of Honduras, wanted former President Manuel Zelaya to remain in jail while the judicial process against him for violation of the Constitution was formalized. Curiously, Hugo Chávez, Lula da Silva and Daniel Ortega have made that detention possible.

  • The Dragon Stirs

    BY: Geoff Dyer | Financial Times

    Behind China’s more assertive world stance lies a perception that American influence is on the wane -- but the upshot may be engagement rather than confrontation.

  • China's Two-Sided 'Miracle' Should Warn the Ebullient

    BY: David Howell | The Japan Times

    How ironic it would be if a still undemocratic China, after centuries of inward-looking stagnation, was about to rescue the open capitalist system in the 21st century.

  • The IMF Beyond the Crisis

    BY: Age Bakker | The Moscow Times

    The International Monetary Fund has come to the rescue of a number of countries during the economic crisis, and it should be given a mandate that would give it the clout to help prevent such crises from recurring.