"A democratically elected Hamas is still a terrorist organization."

Hamas has targeted and killed many civilians, and Israel's occupation has contributed to a violent political environment.

Steven A. Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, started off the evening by acknowledging several facts, which he immediately said were entirely irrelevant. Yes, he said, Hamas was legitimately elected freely and fairly. Yes, Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank and, until recently, Gaza. Yes, Hamas has done much good with its social programs. But, he said, none of that matters. Hamas' central charter calls for the violent overthrow of Israel. Hamas continues to kill innocent civilians. The group must lay down its arms and renounce its violent charter. Until then, Cook said, Hamas can only be labeled a terrorist group.

"I'm ready to make painful compromises"

Hamas is not a partner for peace," Netanyahu said to one of 26 standing ovations. Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel, the killing of Jews around the globe - and its leader recently bemoaned the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Last Friday at the White House, Netanyahu scolded Obama on how unrealistic it was for the administration to push 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations with Palestinians.

This rocket created a new reality in which nearly one million Israeli residents [about 15 percent of the entire population] were at risk.

The IDF has noted that militants commonly hide a Qassam in a commercial truck, drive to a clearing near the Gaza border and launch the rocket. One Hamas website states that this takes only 15 minutes.

maximum range of those rockets is up to 40 km.

A second argument is that Abkhazia and “South Ossetia” declared their independence after a mass ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Georgians, and other ethnicities had artificially changed the demographic composition of the two regions. Russia’s military presence in those territories both before and after the war as well as the absence of proper international peace mechanisms have prevented the majority Georgian population from returning home. While in Kosovo the very purpose of the international mission was to help the Kosovar Albanians to return safely, hundreds of thousands of Georgians have not been allowed to go back to Abkhazia and Tskhinvali. Thus, unlike Kosovo, the de-facto authorities in Abkhazia and Tskhinvali do not represent the majority of the lawful residents in those territories but are merely puppet regimes whose declarations have no legitimacy. Recognizing the independence of the occupied territories would just legitimize the use of ethnic cleansing as a device to change international borders.The ethnic cleansing of Georgians has been officially recognized by the UN General Assembly, by the OSCE in 1994, 1996 and 1999 during its Budapest, Lisbon and Istanbul summits, and by several individual states. Paragraph 17 of the 1999 OSCE Istanbul Summit Document states: “We reiterate our strong condemnation as formulated in the Budapest and Lisbon Summit Documents of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ resulting in mass destruction and expulsion of predominantly Georgian population in Abkhazia, Georgia.”

Of course, one can argue that the territorial integrity of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova has already been recognized by many international organizations and by the majority of states in the world. The UN Security Council, notably, adopted many resolutions affirming the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia and Azerbaijan.47 That is why one could conclude that this standpoint reflects already the position of the international community, according to which the secession of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh has not been recognized (apart from Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru in Abkhazia’s and S. Ossetia’s case).

The Court did not state in the Opinion that Kosovo through its declaration of independence effectively seceded from Serbia and thus the new state of “Kosovo” emerged. As it did not call into question the validity of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999), which legitimizes the presence of international territorial administration in Kosovo, one can conclude that this resolution is still in force until a new resolution is adopted by the Council. In fact, according to this resolution, Kosovo shall only be given substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia). Hence it can be stated that, from a legal point of view, Kosovo still can be seen as part of Serbia.

Meanwhile, ignoring Russia’s warnings, western countries rushed to recognise Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence from Serbia. We argued consistently that it would be impossible, after that, to tell the Abkhazians and Ossetians (and dozens of other groups around the world) that what was good for the Kosovo Albanians was not good for them. In international relations, you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others.

Mexico's drug cartels would continue to be, in the words of the Justice Department's National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009, "the greatest drug-trafficking threat to the United States."

New "landmark" research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.

The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain's Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.

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