Pressure for Gaza ceasefire puts Egypt's new president in the spotlight
International pressure for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip puts Egypt's new Islamist president in the spotlight today after a sixth day of Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli air strikes that have killed more than 100 people.
Israel's leaders weighed the benefits and risks of sending tanks and infantry into the densely populated coastal enclave two months before an Israeli election, and indicated they would prefer a diplomatic path backed by world powers, including US President Barack Obama, the European Union and Russia.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top ministers debated their next moves in a meeting that lasted into the early hours of today.
EUROZONE CRISIS
Moody's downgrades France credit rating
Moody's Investors Service has stripped France of its top government bond rating. The rating agency blamed the move on France's poor economic growth outlook and its exposure to contagion from indebted eurozone nations.
The euro dropped late on Monday after Moody's cut France's gold-plated AAA credit ranking by one notch to Aa1. France also saw its negative outlook maintained, meaning a further downgrade remains possible.
In a statement Moody's cited France's "disproportionately large" eurozone crisis exposure risk, adding that it was becoming increasingly difficult to predict how the country will manage eurozone shocks. It also alluded to France's continued lack of competitiveness.
Asian nations feud over South China Sea
November 20, 2012 - 12:33PM
Lindsay Murdoch
Phnom Penh: Tensions over rival territorial claims in the South China Sea have flared at a meeting of Asia leaders, overshadowing wider talks Tuesday on security, economics and trade.
Intense diplomatic efforts to allow the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations to present a united front on the issue broke down ahead of the East Asian Summit, a forum of 18 world leaders, including Barack Obama and Julia Gillard.
Cambodia, this year's chair of ASEAN and a close ally of China, said on Monday that ASEAN had agreed not to "internationalise" the disputes, supporting China premier Wen Jiabao who repeated his country's stand they should not be discussed at multilateral events such as the summit or in ASEAN.
Tension in DRC intensifies after shelling in Rwanda
Rwanda has accused UN-backed DRC forces of shelling its territory, but said it won't respond militarily to what it called Kinshasa's "provocation"
Tension between the Central African neighbours is reaching breaking point over an insurgency in Congo's eastern hills that Kinshasa's government says is orchestrated by Rwanda with designs on the region's mineral riches.
"Rwanda does not intend to respond to provocation coming from the DRC," Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo told Reuters. "Issues in (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo) are too serious to be subjected to game playing."
A Rwandan army spokesperson earlier said Congo's military had fired artillery, anti-aircraft and tank rounds into the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi, injuring three people, as fighting raged between Congo's army and advancing M23 rebels.
Top issue as Colombia-FARC negotiators meet? Land
Lack of access to land by rural populations has been a cause and a consequence of Colombia's five-decade-old conflict – and will be a focus of today's FARC-Colombia peace talks in Cuba.
By Sibylla Brodzinsky, Correspondent / November 19, 2012
The earth in this part of northern Colombia is dark, rich, and fertile. Spit out a seed of any type of fruit or vegetable, the peasants here say, and a plant will sprout wherever it lands.
Gabriel Pulido and his family have worked this land for generations, though they have never owned any of it. Mr. Pulido remembers when Maria la Baja, a municipality that lies on the edge of the Montes de Maria mountains, used to be considered the breadbasket of the region, providing corn, rice, plantains, yucca, and a tuber known as ñame to the cities.
But after decades of guerrilla and paramilitary violence, forced displacement, and land grabs, today thousands of peasants are landless, and much of the food production has been replaced with oil palm plantations. Often now it is cheaper to buy staple foods from distributors who bring them from elsewhere in the country.
Solzhenitsyn's One Day: The book that shook the USSR
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's classic novel, was published 50 years ago this month. A short, simply-told tale about a prisoner trying to survive the Gulag - the Soviet labour camp system - it is now regarded as one of the most significant books of the 20th Century.
It was still dark, although a greenish light was brightening in the east. A thin, treacherous breeze was creeping in from the same direction. There is no worse moment than when you turn out for work parade in the morning. In the dark, in the freezing cold, with a hungry belly, and the whole day ahead of you. You lose the power of speech...
In November 1962, one story shook the Soviet Union.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn described a day in the life of a prison camp inmate, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.
The character was fictional. But there were millions like him - innocent citizens who, like Solzhenitsyn himself, had been sent to the Gulag in Joseph Stalin's wave of terror.
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