Bashar Assad Likely To Outlast Barack Obama In Office
He's not going anywhere.
Bashar Assad's presidency looks likely to outlast Barack Obama's.
As the United States has turned its attention to defeating the Islamic State group, it has softened its stance on the Syrian leader. More than four years ago, Obama demanded that Assad leave power. Administration officials later said Assad did not have to step down on "Day One" of a political transition. Now, they are going further.
A peace plan agreed to last weekend by 17 nations meeting in Vienna says nothing about Assad's future, but states that "free and fair elections would be held pursuant to the new constitution within 18 months." To clarify the timeline, the State Department said this past week that the clock starts once Assad's representatives and opposition figures begin talks on a constitution. The vote would determine a new parliament, though not necessarily a new president.
Getting to constitutional talks will be difficult. It implies that Syria's warring parties first reach a cease-fire and establish a transition government - something unattainable so far. Neither Syria's government nor its fractured opposition has endorsed the strategy yet or done much to advance it.
Bahrain torture report undermines UK's reform claims
New accounts of prisoner mistreatment documented in Human Rights Watch report, undermining British claims that Gulf ally has reformed security services
Britain’s close Gulf ally Bahrain has been torturing detainees during interrogation, a leading human rights watchdog says, undermining UK government claims that the island state has reformed its security forces and improved accountability.
A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reveals the same sort of abuses by Bahraini personnel that were documented by an official commission of inquiry set up after popular protests against the Sunni-dominated government in 2011.
Accounts of the mistreatment of prisoners will bolster claims by Bahraini opposition figures that Britain is turning a blind eye to unacceptable practices, three weeks after the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, inaugurated a controversial new British naval base near the capital, Manama.
HRW interviewed 10 detainees who said they had experienced coercive interrogations at the interior ministry’s criminal investigations directorate (CID) and in police stations since 2012, and four former inmates of Jaw prison, who said they had been tortured as recently as March.
Japan Yasukuni war shrine explosion leaves public toilets damaged at Tokyo site
The shrine pays homage to those who died in Japan's wars, including kamikaze pilots
An explosion has damaged the public toilets at Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni shrine, which honours Japanese war dead.
Yasukuni, which enshrines 2.5 million war dead, including executed war criminals, has been the target of criticism from China and South Korea, who suffered from Japan's Second World War atrocities and aggression.
Tokyo police said in a statement that they received a call about an explosion and smoke at Yasukuni.
Firefighters were also called to the scene and found the ceiling and walls of the toilets had been damaged, said an official at the Tokyo Fire Department. But the fire was out by the time they arrived.
Bangladesh asked to end revenge against ‘Pakistanism’
Condemning executions of Opp leaders, Islamabad calls for reconciliation as per spirit of 1974 agreement, Dhaka summons Pakistani envoy
November 23, 2015
ISLAMABAD: Reacting to flawed trials and executions in Bangladesh, Islamabad on Sunday called for reconciliation in accordance with the spirit of 1974 agreement, while Interior Minister Ch Nisar said murder of humanity and revenge to ‘Pakistanism’ should come to an end. “Pakistan is deeply disturbed at this development,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Qazi Khaliullah said in a statement while expressing deep concern and anguish over the unfortunate executions of Bangladesh National Party leaders Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mojaheed.
The spokesperson said that Pakistan has also been noting the reaction of the international community on the flawed trials in Bangladesh related to the events of 1971. He said reconciliation is needed in Bangladesh in accordance with the spirit of Pakistan-India-Bangladesh agreement of April 9, 1974. The agreement calls for a forward looking approach in matters relating to 1971, adding the agreement would foster goodwill and harmony. This agreement was signed among the three countries after Eastern Pakistan ceded from Western part (present Pakistan) after 1971 war.
Is Brazil nearly out of fresh water?
As the drought in Southeastern Brazil drags on, the people of Sao Paulo are struggling with stringent rationing. What accounts for the water crisis and how could it be remedied?
Once considered “the Saudi Arabia of Water,” Brazil is now nearly deplete of it.
As drought continues to scorch Southeastern Brazil to unprecedented degrees, Sao Paulo primary water reservoir, the Cantareira, has been reduced to its last drops. As of August, it is 17 percent of capacity.
As for the residents of Sao Paulo, NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and Lauren Migaki report, conservation groups predict there may only be enough water to last five more months.
Last month, NASA’s new satellite data revealed that the drought is much worse than originally believed. The Southeast has lost 56 trillion liters of water every year for the past three years, the report found – a figure that those releasing the data hope will serve as a wakeup call to local policymakers.On Okinawa, clash over war and peace began with U.S. victory in WWII
As two U.S. Marine Corps aircraft soar above a pristine Pacific beach, a Japanese environmentalist on the shore below worries that she may see many more of them very soon.
“I feel the vibration” when Marine aircraft pass overhead, says Anna Shimabukuro, 37. “I feel uncomfortable.”
She’s spent more than half her life fighting a proposal to place new Marine air strips near the village where she grew up on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Her side has thwarted the plan year after year.
But the day when Marine planes land near her may be inching closer, with Tokyo and Washington insisting that the runways must be built. They’d expand a base on the front lines of a standoff where traditional U.S. allies are guarding against China’s growing military might in the South and East China seas.
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