Second group of chemical weapons inspectors is heading to Syria
Additional experts will reinforce the 19 inspectors and 16 U.N. logistics and security personnel who began work last week to destroy or impound banned weapons.
By Shashank Bengali
WASHINGTON — A second wave of chemical weapons inspectors is heading to war-battered Syria this week as the international effort to disarm President Bashar Assad's poison gas program races to meet its United Nations-ordered deadlines, officials said Tuesday.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the lead technical agency in the operation, said additional experts will reinforce the 19 inspectors and 16 U.N. logistics and security personnel who started work in Damascus last week on a plan to dismantle, destroy or impound Syria's toxic stockpiles.
Operating under supervision of the inspectors, Syrian personnel began disabling the arsenal over the weekend, using cutting tools and grinders to ruin or destroy unfilled warheads, bombs and laboratory equipment used to mix precursor chemicals to make lethal nerve gases. The U.N. has set a Nov. 1 deadline for destroying Syria's ability to produce chemical weapons.
"These developments present a constructive beginning for what will nonetheless be a long and difficult process," Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Netherlands-based chemical weapons organization, said in a statement Tuesday.
Call for Mediterranean-wide rescue service as Lampedusa death toll rises
EU home affairs commissioner seeks increased funding for Frontex patrols
Paddy Agnew
With the death toll in last Thursday’s Lampedusa migrant boat tragedy continuing to rise, EU home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström yesterday called for more funding for the EU’s frontier agency, Frontex, to enable it to launch Mediterranean-wide “search and rescue” patrols.
By last night the death toll had risen to 274 but divers are reporting many more bodies trapped in the sunken vessel.
Today, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, accompanied by Italian prime minister Enrico Letta and deputy prime minister Angelino Alfano, will visit Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island that is actually closer to the Tunisian mainland (113km) than to Italy (176km).
'Worse Than Gangs': Rio Police Criticized for Favela Crackdowns
A new security campaign is helping authorities win back control of Rio de Janeiro's favelas ahead of next year's World Cup. Special police units are driving drug gangs out of the slums -- but often only to replace them with their own thuggish rule.
The operation was peaceful, as had been previously promised. It took just 50 minutes on Sunday for police and soldiers to occupy the Lins favela complex in northern Rio de Janeiro, a collection of 12 slums with an estimated population of 15,000. At the high point of one of the slums, they hoisted the Brazilian flag as an announcement to all that the state had recaptured the site.
The complex had previously been ruled by a heavily armed gang of drug traffickers, as is the case in most of Rio's more than 300 favelas. The gangsters fled after the police announced that a Police Pacification Unit (UPP) would be set up in the favela complex.
Why North Korean tweets are off-limits in the South
Under the National Security Act, South Koreans can be sentenced for everything from re-tweeting North Korea's official Twitter account to reading northern propaganda.
On the 28th floor of Samsung’s headquarters here is a door marked “Restricted Access,” the warning emphasized by two slashing diagonal red lines.
It does not guard the company’s plans for a next-generation smart phone, however, nor any other commercial secrets. Instead, the shelves and filing cabinets behind the door are filled with North Korean government work reports, recent editions of the ruling party’s daily newspaper, and other publications fromPyongyang.
That is forbidden fruit to ordinary South Koreans, who are banned from reading them. Scholars at Samsung’s Economic Research Institute, which holds the small archive, need special clearance from South Korea’s intelligence agency to be able to consult the documents.
Taliban attack on Malala showed Pakistanis ‘who these people really are,’ Hina Rabbani Khar tells Amanpour
By Mick Krever, CNN
The attempted Taliban assassination of Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old girl who advocated for girls’ education, drew a line in the sand between extremism and progressivism, former Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“The contrast is so overwhelming,” she said, “that in some ways it helps Pakistanis, and it reminds Pakistanis, to who these people really are, and the fact that we cannot have Pakistan be taken over by such thought and such people.”
Wednesday marks one year since the Pakistani Taliban boarded Yousafzai’s school bus, singled her out by name, and shot her in the head – a response, ostensibly, to her public advocacy for girl’s education.
Amanpour will interview Yousafzai in a special, The Bravest Girl in the World, which will air on Sunday, October 13.
Chinese media crow over Xi’s ‘star’ performance, Obama’s no-show
By , E-mail the writer
BEIJING — Chinese media gloated Tuesday over President Xi Jinping’s “star” performance at an Asia-Pacific trade summit in Indonesia that his American counterpart was unable to attend.
After the U.S. government shutdown prompted President Obama to cancel plans to travel to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bali, Xi saw an opportunity to press his country’s credentials as a business partner to its neighbors. Although Xi did not mention Obama’s no-show during his public appearances, Chinese newspapers were not so circumspect.
“Chinese President Xi Jinping has become the brightest political star on the Asian diplomatic platform. In contrast, America has lost an important chance to perform,” the Hong Kong-based Communist Party newspaper Ta Kung Pao said in an editorial. “The influence of the U.S. is questioned more and more.”
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