U.S. may leave Karzai out of Afghanistan security pact
The U.S. considers getting a high official in Afghanistan to sign the security agreement, bypassing President Hamid Karzai.
U.S. officials seeking to close a deal by year's end on the future of American troops in Afghanistan are exploring ways to bypass the country's mercurial president, Hamid Karzai, who negotiated the agreement but now refuses to sign it.
Frustrated by Karzai's abrupt declaration that he won't ink the deal before Afghan elections in April, the Obama administration has begun pushing for Foreign Minister Zarar Ahmad Osmani or another top official in Kabul to sign the agreement in coming weeks, several U.S. officials said.
Unless the security pact is enacted this year, the White House says, it will plan a full withdrawal of the remaining 47,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan next year. That could leave Afghanistan without sufficient foreign military assistance to fight a still potent Taliban insurgency and hold fragile territorial gains after 12 years of war.
Thailand protests force evacuation of government offices in Bangkok
Opponents of PM Yingluck Shinawatra and ousted brother Thaksin close more ministries in further day of demonstrations
Thousands of Thai demonstrators have marched on a government office complex as part of efforts to cripple the government and oust the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra.
Having forced the closure of five ministries in the past two days, about 4,000 protesters rallying against Yingluck and her influential brother, the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, moved to surround the complex in northern Bangkok while smaller groups readied to target six other ministries.
Thailand's department of special investigation was evacuated after at least 1,000 protesters surrounded the building. Thailand's equivalent of the FBI is one of several state targets of demonstrators. Its offices form part of a complex of government departments, including those handling tax, immigration and land.
Pope sets out blueprint for pontificate
Papal teaching should not be expected to be definitive on every issue, pope says
Paddy Agnew
In what is arguably the most significant document of his pontificate to date, Pope Francis yesterday released an apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel) which has the hallmarks of a pontifical evangelisation blueprint. This compelling 50,000-word document touches on many of the key issues – poverty, inequality, ecumenism, dialogue with Islam, decentralisation and inculturation (adaptation of the way Church teachings are presented to non-Christian cultures) – that have marked the first eight months of Francis’s pontificate.
The chapter headings are indicative of his style. He moves from No to an Economy of Exclusion to No to the New Idolatry of Money on to No to a Financial System which Rules rather than Serves and to No to the Inequality which Spawns Violence. Much of what the pope has already said is reiterated, forcefully, in this work, an exhortation he alone wrote.
Shanghai starts carbon emissions trading
November 27, 2013 - 8:45AM
The first carbon permits in Shanghai traded at 27 yuan ($4.85) on Tuesday, as the financial hub launched China's second such trading scheme in a bid to cut its fast-growing greenhouse gas emissions.
Three trades for a total of 9,500 permits for 2013 compliance, known as Shanghai Emissions Allowances (SHEAs), went through in the first half-hour after the market opened. A third carbon market will open in Beijing on Thursday.
China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, but it has pledged to reduced its emissions per unit of GDP to 40-45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
Egypt draft constitution deflates hopes for change
Egypt's new constitution is still in the drafting stage but has already disappointed rights groups and activists who had hoped it would curb the military's wide-ranging powers and privileges.
They have particularly objected to a provision which would allow military trials for civilians accused of "harming" the armed forces, which they fear could be interpreted expansively to target protesters, journalists and dissidents.
The passing of the revised constitution through a referendum is the first milestone of a road map to elected rule offered by Egypt's military-installed authorities, who took office after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi on July 3.
The army toppled Mursi after millions of Egyptians called for his resignation, citing among their chief grievances a 2012 constitutional decree that gave Egypt's first democratically elected leader extraordinary powers, which he later rescinded.
Israeli military drills in Jordan Valley stir Palestinian fears of eviction
The Israeli military regularly evacuates Palestinian villages in the Jordan Valley during military drills. The evacuations are temporary, but Palestinians fear a permanent eviction.
Two days before last month's Eid al-Adha holiday, the Israel Defense Forces arrived in this tiny Palestinian community in the Jordan Valley with an abrupt message: Clear out.
''An officer named Yigal came and told us we would have to leave our home on the holiday because there would be military training here,'' says Ha'il Hussein Turkman, a sheep and cow farmer and father of six. ''Yigal said, 'The army wants to train. You must go. Those who will not leave, I will bring soldiers to force them out'."
The IDF says training in areas like Khirbet Ibziq, where residents were forced to evacuate for 22 hours on Oct. 22 and 23, is ''vital'' because its topography – rocky hills within a valley – resembles the landscape of areas of possible future military operations. But the tent-dwelling herders who live here and Israeli rights groups see temporary forced evacuations as a means of making their claim to the land tenuous.
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