MIDDLE EAST
Iran Nuclear Pact Faces an Array of Opposing Forces
WASHINGTON — When President Obama wrote last month to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging him to overcome a decade of mistrust and negotiate a deal limiting Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, it was perhaps the president’s last effort to reach a reconciliation with Iran that could remake the Middle East.
Today, Mr. Obama needs a foreign policy accomplishment more than ever, and he sees time running out on his hope of changing the calculus in a Middle East where Americans are, against his instincts, back on the ground. But the forces arrayed against a deal are formidable — not just Mr. Khamenei and the country’s hard-liners, but newly empowered Republicans, some of his fellow Democrats, and many of the United States’ closest allies.
China will never use force to achieve its goals: Xi
By Martin Parry57 minutes ago
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday vowed always to use peaceful means in pursuit of Beijing's goals, including in maritime disputes, just days after US President Barack Obama warned of the dangers of outright conflict in Asia.
Addressing the Australian parliament in an honour bestowed only on one other Chinese leader, Hu Jintao in 2003, Xi said: "China remains unshakeable in its resolve to pursue peaceful development."
"Neither turbulence nor war serves the fundamental interests of the Chinese people."
Colombia Peace Talks With FARC Suspended After Army General Kidnapped
| By JOSHUA GOODMAN
Posted:
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has suspended peace talks with the South American nation's largest rebel group after an army general was taken captive.
Gen. Ruben Dario Alzate was surveying a rural energy project along a remote river in western Colombia Sunday when he and two others were snatched by armed men. A soldier managed to flee in the group's motor boat and reported that the captors were members of the 34th front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Colombian media reported that it*s the first time in a half-century of fighting that the guerrillas have taken an army general captive.
Calling the apparent abduction "totally unacceptable," Santos said he had ordered government peace negotiators set to travel Monday to Cuba for the next round of talks to stay back until Alzate and the others — an army captain and a government lawyer — are freed.
Lebanon's Druze, unhappily, are being dragged into Syria's war
The minority Druze are split over whom to support in Syria - with some community leaders backing Assad as the best chance for their own survival. But others, like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, disagree.
ASHAYA, LEBANON — Deadly clashes pitting Syrian Sunni jihadis against Druze militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have exposed divisions within this small esoteric community that spans the Syria-Lebanon border.
The bloody wars roiling the Middle East from Lebanon to Iraq’s border with Iran are essentially political struggles for power and control. But the two main protagonists are adherents of the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam. That leaves the region’s religious minorities, like the Druze who only number around one million in the Middle East, facing the agonizing – and potentially existential – decision of who to support in order to ensure communal survival. But siding with one risks turning the other into an enemy.
Study: Fukushima health risks underestimated |
Japanese government says nuclear energy is still needed, but environmentalists are wary of another Fukushima. |
Tokyo, Japan - "Hot spots" of nuclear radiation still contaminate parts of Fukushima Prefecture, according to findings from the latest Greenpeace radiation monitoring mission near the Daiichi nuclear power plant that experienced a melt down after an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Experts from the environmental organisation also claim that authorities have consistently underestimated the amount of contamination and the health risks involved.
Greenpeace will use these results to try to persuade local governments with nuclear power plants in their districts to resist lobbying from the central government to have them reactivated. All 50 of Japan's remaining nuclear plants were shut down following the 2011 disaster.
Greenpeace began independently monitoring radiation in Fukushima within a few days of the nuclear accident, and it has conducted field trips each year since then. The latest such trip took place from October 24-27.
17 November 2014 Last updated at 00:58
At the UN, women play increasingly powerful roles
Long an all-male enclave, the US Security Council now has a record number of women. Does that influence how diplomacy gets done at the highest levels?
When Madeleine Albright served as the US permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, she used to speak of the G7. She was not referring to the Group of Seven nations, a rich-countries club of the world's most advanced economies. Rather, she was describing the paltry number of female ambassadors at the UN. Back in the early-1990s, when Albright used to informally bring this group together, two black VIP limousines could have comfortably ferried the entire female ambassadorial corps to the meeting.
Now it would require a fleet. There are 31 female permanent representatives, a record number in the history of the UN. More significantly, women also occupy six seats at the horseshoe table of the Security Council - those belonging to Argentina, Jordan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Nigeria and the US.
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