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So Close on Iran, Kerry Defends Continued Talks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...y-defends-continued-talks.html

iran kerry talks US politics policy

shared by grayton downing on 11 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Secretary of State John Kerry came up a few disputed words short of closing a landmark nuclear deal with Iran on Sunday in Geneva. Now he is defending the diplomacy that led to that near miss against a rising chorus of critics at home and abroad.
  • “Having the negotiation does not mean giving up anything,”
  • “It means you will put to the test what is possible and what is needed, and whether or not Iran is prepared to do what is necessary to prove that its program can only be a peaceful program.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • “The French signed off on it; we signed off on it,” Mr. Kerry said. “There was unity, but Iran couldn’t take it.”
  • He offered familiar arguments as well: Without diplomacy, he said, Iran is much more likely to obtain a nuclear bomb, which would set off an arms race in the Middle East and leave everyone less secure.
  • On Wednesday, Mr. Kerry is to testify behind closed doors before the Senate Banking Committee to urge senators not to move ahead with a new, tougher set of sanctions on Iran
  • A 10-day pause before the next round of talks is an added danger, giving opponents time to marshal their ammunition and stoke enough doubt about a deal that the United States and its partners could have less flexibility to work out differences the next time.
  • Put simply, they worry that we are fair-weather friends who can’t be depended on to cover their backs,”
  • Standing next to Mr. Kerry in Abu Dhabi, the foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, said he was satisfied with the level of consultation with the United States on Iran. He offered Mr. Kerry polite encouragement to keep trying for a deal, though he left little doubt he would oppose any agreement that would give Iran the right to enrich uranium.
  • But given that Iran already has 19,000 centrifuges, many experts and former administration officials say that such an accommodation will inevitably have to be part of a final agreement.
  • “President Obama himself will have to step up and lead this effort,” said Cliff Kupchan, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy. “U.S. assurance will have to come from the very top.”
grayton downing

Once-Thriving City Is Reduced to Ruin in Philippines - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ves-scenes-of-devastation.html

city reduced philippines crisis

shared by grayton downing on 11 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The largest storm surge in modern history in the Philippines sent walls of water over half a mile inland along a crowded coastline when Typhoon Haiyan came ashore here last Friday, erasing villages and towns and leaving thousands of people dead or missing.
  • Decomposing bodies still lie along the roads, like the corpse in a pink, short-sleeved shirt and blue shorts facedown in a puddle 100 yards from the airport
  • “It was a tsunami-like storm surge, it is the first time,”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “Our home was destroyed, there is no food in this town, so we have to flee,” she said, standing with her teenage granddaughter who held their only drinking water, a nearly empty plastic bottle that even when full would only hold perhaps two cups.
  • Rosemary Balais, 39, said that a very large proportion, possibly more than half, of the 5,000 people in her hometown Tanauan, near Tacloban, seemed to be missing. “My sister and their children were there and we have not heard from them since last Thursday,
  • In a country cursed with a succession of natural disasters, from earthquakes to violent storms to volcanic eruptions, the typhoon has emerged as especially deadly and destructive. “It’s going to be classified as one of the worst, if not the worst, in decades,”
grayton downing

To Shape Young Palestinians, Hamas Creates Its Own Textbooks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...creates-its-own-textbooks.html

palestinians textbooks hamas politics crisis

shared by grayton downing on 05 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Hamas officials said they had introduced the new textbooks, and doubled the time devoted to the national education course to two sessions per week,
  • “We need to make sure generations stick to the national rights,”
  • In April, Hamas approved a law requiring gender-segregated schools from age 9, and making criminal any contact between educational institutions and Israel.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “to study the history of Palestine instead of the history of Egypt or Jordan,” and that the books present the “Palestine I want to learn about — I don’t recognize that Palestine is only Gaza and West Bank.”
  • “The book has nothing about Oslo. It’s our right to know about Oslo because it’s a fact in our life.”
  • The new books, written by a Hamas committee, feature cover pictures of Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a West Bank city, both sites of continuing clashes between Muslim and Jewish worshipers.
  • It’s a lesson of nationalism and belonging.”
grayton downing

To Shape Young Palestinians, Hamas Creates Its Own Textbooks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...creates-its-own-textbooks.html

palestinians textbooks

shared by grayton downing on 05 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • When a class of Palestinian ninth graders in Gaza recently discussed the deadly 1929 riots over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, it was guided by a new textbook, introduced this fall by the Islamist Hamas movement.
  • For the first time since taking control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the Hamas movement is deviating from the approved Palestinian Authority curriculum, using the new texts as part of a broader push to infuse the next generation with its militant ideology.
  • Textbooks have long been a point of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which dueling historical narratives and cultural clashes underpin a territorial fight. And they are central examples of what Israeli leaders call Palestinian “incitement” against Jews, held up as an obstacle to peace talks newly resumed under American pressure.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • What Gaza teenagers are reading in their 50-page hardcover texts this fall includes references to the Jewish Torah and Talmud as “fabricated,” and a description of Zionism as a racist movement whose goals include driving Arabs out of all of the area between the Nile in Africa and the Euphrates in Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
  • “Palestinians have developed a system of deception — to English-speaking people they sell one story, and to themselves they have a different story,” Mr. Kuperwasser said. “Textbooks are one of the tools with which they tell their children what is the truth.” He added, “If you want real peace, it has to be based on a real change in the culture of hatred.”
grayton downing

BBC News - UN aid chief says 40% of Syrians in need of assistance - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-24813902

aid crisis syria

shared by grayton downing on 05 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Some 9.3 million people in Syria - or about 40% of the population - now need outside assistance, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos has said.
  • This figure has risen by 2.5m from the 6.8m total the UN gave in September.
  • More than half of those in need are people living in Syria displaced by conflict, a total of 6.5m, up from 4.25m internally displaced people in June.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • It followed a resolution on eliminating Syria's chemical weapons. The UN says the number of those needing help has risen by more than 30% from 6.8 million in September. Syria has a population of 23 million.
  • The UN estimates that more than 2.8m people have fled Syria since the unrest began in March 2011 resulting in a humanitarian crisis.
  • More than 100,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the conflict.
grayton downing

BBC News - Turkey's Bosphorus sub-sea tunnel links Europe and Asia - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-europe-24721779

turkey tunnel europe asia

shared by grayton downing on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • A railway tunnel underneath the Bosphorus Strait has been opened in Turkey, creating a new link between the Asian and European shores of Istanbul.
  • Japan invested $1bn of the $4bn (£3.4bn) total cost of the project, named Marmaray,
  • In theory it brings closer the day when it will be possible to travel from London to Beijing via Istanbul by train.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The rail service will be capable of carrying 75,000 people per hour in either direction.
  • Authorities came under fire earlier this year when protesters opposed plans to redevelop a park in Istanbul. Widespread violence between anti-government demonstrators and security forces ensued.
grayton downing

BBC News - Four French hostages freed in Niger - President Hollande - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-africa-24735293

french hostages Niger

shared by grayton downing on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Four French hostages kidnapped in Niger in 2010 have been released, France's President Hollande has announced.
  • "I have some good news. I just learned from Niger's president that our four hostages in the Sahel, the Arlit hostages, have been released."
  • They were all employees at the uranium mine run by the French nuclear company Areva.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "We can't say that they're in great health but their health is fine
  • During the military campaign, French troops forced Islamists out of northern Mali, killing or scattering them across the vast Sahel region.
  • Islamist militants claimed responsibility for the attack.
grayton downing

BBC News - Starved Syria civilians flee besieged Damascus suburb - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-24730536

syria crisis flee

shared by grayton downing on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Thousands of Syrian civilians have finally been allowed to leave the besieged Damascus suburb of Moadamiya.
  • The exodus of civilians has been made possible by an apparent relaxation of a blockade by government forces.
  • The situation has become so desperate that earlier this month Muslim clerics issued a religious ruling allowing people to eat cats, dogs and donkeys just to survive.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • For months, the UN and other aid agencies have been calling for urgent help, fearing the worst for the people of Moadamiya.
  • "We didn't see a piece of bread for nine months,"
  • "We were eating leaves and grass."
  • Before Syria's civil war began in 2011, some 95% of children in the country were vaccinated against the disease, but now an estimated 500,000 children have not been immunised.
  • The disease has been largely eradicated in developed countries but remains endemic in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
grayton downing

BBC News - US intelligence chief Clapper defends spying policy - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-us-canada-24729628

spying obama US politics crisis

shared by grayton downing on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said such efforts were a "top tenet" of US intelligence policy.
  • House of Representatives the US did not "indiscriminately" spy on nations.
  • "Leadership intentions is kind of a basic tenet of what we collect and analyse
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The information "that led people to believe that the NSA or United States collected that information is false, and it's false that it was collected on European citizens," he added. "It was neither."
  • "It is much more important for this country that we defend this nation and take the beatings than it is to give up a programme that would result in this nation being attacked."
  • In one of the most significant disclosures, German media have reported that the US bugged German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone for more than a decade - and that the surveillance only ended a few months ago.
  • Tuesday's House hearing followed calls by US Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein to end eavesdropping on leaders of the nation's allies.
  • "With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of US allies - including France, Spain, Mexico and Germany - let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed,
  • "It is my understanding that President Obama was not aware Chancellor Merkel's communications were being collected since 2002. That is a big problem."
grayton downing

BBC News - Obama 'not told of Merkel phone bugging' - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-us-canada-24698142

obama spy

shared by grayton downing on 27 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The chief of the US spy agency NSA has not discussed the alleged bugging of German chancellor's phone with President Barack Obama, officials say.
  • A report in German tabloid Bild am Sonntag claimed that Gen Alexander had told the president about the bugging himself.
  • "[General] Alexander did not discuss with President Obama in 2010 an alleged foreign intelligence operation involving German Chancellor Merkel, nor has he ever discussed alleged operations involving Chancellor Merkel," NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Mr Obama is reported to have told the German chancellor that he knew nothing of the operation when the two leaders spoke.
  • For example, it is possible that the chancellor's conversations were recorded, or that her contacts were simply assessed.
grayton downing

A Reason for Hope in Congo's Perpetual War - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-in-congos-perpetual-war.html

congo war US culture crisis

shared by grayton downing on 27 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Less than two weeks after they seized the city, the rebels withdrew, the result of heavy international pressure, doubts about whether they could hold and administer a major city and the promise of negotiations with the government. They left waves of assassinations and disappearances, lootings and carjackings in their wake.
  • Many analysts say that the mandate has always given peacekeepers the authority to use deadly force to protect civilians, and that what was needed were more aggressive commanders.
  • “There does seem to be a determination to get the job done that wasn’t there before,” Mr. Stearns said. “But this is just one victory really. Let’s see what happens next time.”
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  • It remains to be seen if the Obama administration’s increasing pressure on Rwanda will have any effect on the fighting here. The United States cut off military aid to Rwanda this month over its alleged support for M23, which is believed to use child soldiers and depend heavily on Rwanda for supplies.
grayton downing

A Reason for Hope in Congo's Perpetual War - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-in-congos-perpetual-war.html

congo war crisis culture

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  • Still, the battle was a dramatic turnaround from barely a year ago, when the rebels had the upper hand. Ill-disciplined, corrupt and often drunk, the Congolese soldiers were only somewhat more popular than the mutineer rebels who had taken up arms against them.
  • “You cannot compare the present army with the army of yesterday,”
  • Last week, the negotiations broke down and fighting resumed. A spokesman for M23 said the Congolese military had started the latest round of fighting, but General Bahuma said they were only responding to a rebel attack.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Last fall, after the rebels briefly overran Goma, the regional capital and a city of one million people, the United Nations peacekeeping forces here were exposed as little more than blue-helmeted mannequins.
  • The fighting in eastern Congo is one of the world’s most intractable, prolonged and deadly conflicts, claiming millions of lives over a decade and a half. The region is rich in gold and diamonds, and minerals like coltan and cassiterite, but instead of making its people wealthy they have only tempted invaders and local warlords. Goma, a bustling commercial hub on the Rwandan border, has been plagued by violence and poverty.
  • Last November, hundreds of rebels, machine guns on their backs, marched into Goma, setting off a national crisis. As Congolese soldiers retreated, they raped more than 102 women and 33 girls, some as young as 6, according to United Nations investigators. Riots erupted across Congo, even in the capital, Kinshasa, a thousand miles away, threatening the government of President Joseph Kabila.
grayton downing

Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dest-strategy-for-mideast.html

mideast US politics obama strategy

shared by grayton downing on 27 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Critics say the retooled policy will not shield the United States from the hazards of the Middle East. By holding back, they say, the United States risks being buffeted by crisis after crisis, as the president’s fraught history with Syria illustrates.
  • “You can have your agenda, but you can’t control what happens,”
  • Egypt is still the test case of whether there can be a peaceful political transition in the Arab world
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Some priorities were clear. The election of Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran presents the West with perhaps its last good chance to curb its nuclear program.
  • lready, the government shutdown forced the president to cancel a trip to Southeast Asia — a decision that particularly irked Ms. Rice, who was planning to accompany Mr. Obama and plunge into a part of the world with which she did not have much experience.
grayton downing

Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dest-strategy-for-mideast.html

mideast strategy US politics obama

shared by grayton downing on 27 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The United States, he declared, would focus on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria. Everything else would take a back seat.
  • The president’s goal, said Ms. Rice, who discussed the review for the first time in an interview last week, is to avoid having events in the Middle East swallow his foreign policy agenda, as it had those of presidents before him.
  • “We can’t just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is,” she said, adding, “He thought it was a good time to step back and reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive the region.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • What are America’s core interests in the Middle East? How has the upheaval in the Arab world changed America’s position? What can Mr. Obama realistically hope to achieve? What lies outside his reach?
  • In May 2011, he said the United States would support democracy, human rights and free markets with all the “diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal.” But at the United Nations last month, he said, “we can rarely achieve these objectives through unilateral American action — particularly with military action.”
grayton downing

BBC News - NSA: New reports in German media deepen US-Merkel spy row - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-europe-24692908

spy politics crisis obama

shared by grayton downing on 27 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Fresh reports in German media based on leaked US intelligence documents are prompting damaging new questions about the extent of US surveillance.
  • Another report says Mr Obama was told in 2010 about the surveillance and failed to stop it.
  • The spy row has led to the worst diplomatic crisis betweeen the two countries in living memory.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • On Friday, Germany and France said they wanted the US to sign a no-spy deal by the end of the year.
  • For example, it is possible that the chancellor's conversations were recorded, or that her contacts were simply assessed.
  • President Barack Obama apologised to the German chancellor and promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged phone monitoring and would have stopped it if he had, Der Spiegel reports.
  • "Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue," the newspaper quoted a senior NSA official as saying.
  • Germany is sending its top intelligence chiefs to Washington in the coming week to "push forward" an investigation into the spying allegations, which have caused outrage in Germany.
  • If the existence of listening stations in US embassies were known, there would be "severe damage for the US's relations with a foreign government," the documents said.
grayton downing

BBC News - China reporter Chen Yongzhou 'confesses' on TV - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-asia-china-24682523

china reporter

shared by grayton downing on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • An imprisoned Chinese journalist whose newspaper has made front-page appeals for his release has confessed to wrongdoing on state TV.
  • Experts say confessions are still routinely coerced, despite an amendment to the criminal procedure law earlier this year forbidding the authorities from forcing anyone to incriminate themselves.
  • "I did this mainly because I hankered after money and fame. I've been used. I've realised my wrongdoing."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • China's newspaper industry is tightly controlled by a system of local censors carrying out party directives.
  • But there have been several high-profile rows over censorship.
  • Earlier this year staff at the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly paper went on strike after a new-year editorial calling for reform was censored
grayton downing

BBC News - Japan will stand up to China, says PM Shinzo Abe - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...business-24684683

japan china politics crisis

shared by grayton downing on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Mr Abe told the Wall Street Journal there were "concerns that China was trying to change the status quo by force, rather than by the rule of law".
  • Relations between China and Japan have been strained over recent years.
  • using air force planes to shoot down unmanned Chinese aircraft in Japanese airspace.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Another contentious issue between the two countries is the dispute over a group of islands.
  • China has warned against Japanese nationalism in a region where Japan's colonial expansionism is still bitterly remembered.
  • "There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won't be able to emerge peacefully," Mr Abe says.
  • On Saturday, China's defence ministry responded saying: "If Japan does resort to enforcement measures like shooting down aircraft, that is a serious provocation to us, an act of war.
grayton downing

BBC News - Iran hangs 16 rebels 'in reprisal for border deaths' - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-24682729

iran deaths crisis

shared by grayton downing on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Sixteen rebels have been hanged in Iran in retaliation for the deaths of at least 14 border guards in an ambush, say Iranian news agencies.
  • A parliamentary committee on national security will look into the attack on Sunday, meeting relevant officials, a committee member was quoted as saying.
  • At least 14 guards were killed in the ambush, reports now say, though 17 were previously reported to have died. A number were also wounded, reports said.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The region has experienced frequent deadly clashes in recent years.
  • AFP news agency quotes officials as saying more than 4,000 police officers and soldiers have been killed in the past three decades in fighting with traffickers.
grayton downing

Middle East Peace Talks Go On, Under the Radar - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-continue-under-the-radar.html

middle east peace talks politics policy us

shared by grayton downing on 24 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Nearly three months into the latest round of Washington-brokered peace talks in what has been the Middle East’s most intractable conflict, Mr. Kerry met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Rome on Wednesday, having said the process had “intensified” over 13 negotiating sessions, i
  • After years of stalemate, the very fact that the talks are continuing — and, perhaps even more important,
  • “In a period where the whole Middle East is moving in the direction of chaos, having one area where the parties are trying to further stabilize their relationship is a positive development,”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The fact that they continue to talk means these are serious discussions. Where this goes, what’s the likely outcome, I think it’s really way too early to predict.”
  • In contrast to previous rounds of Israeli-Palestinian talks, little has leaked from the negotiating room.
  • Recent polls show scant optimism on the street. Palestinians are split, with 47 percent supporting the resumption of negotiations and 49 percent opposed, according to a September survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research; 70 percent think they will not lead to an agreement. Sixty-one percent of Israeli Jews back the talks, according to the Israel Democracy Institute’s Peace Index published this month, but 81 percent see no real chance of a deal.
  • “the negotiations are difficult but they haven’t reached a deadlock.”
  • “For both sides the current situation is very, very comfortable,” Mr. Beilin said. “All of us are playing the game. Many meetings, very serious, good relationship, all issues are on the agenda, fighting the lunatics on both sides, and it’s beautiful. The only problem is that there will be an end to it in the coming months, and the admission of failure might be devastating.” <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>
grayton downing

Criticism of United States' Mideast Policy Increasingly Comes From Allies - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...iran-but-divisions-remain.html

criticism united states mideast obama policy

shared by grayton downing on 24 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • American and other Western officials say the elimination of Mr. Assad’s stockpiles of poison gas would be a major accomplishment.
  • “But if this can be solved satisfactorily, diplomatically, it is clearly better for everyone,
  • Iran, by contrast, has insisted that the West acknowledge what it says is its right to enrich uranium as part of a negotiated compromise that would put limits on the nation’s nuclear program.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • American officials did not publicly acknowledge that “right” in talks with Iranian officials in Geneva last week, but it is clear that the United States and other world powers are willing to explore a deal that is far less stringent than the one Mr. Netanyahu proposed.
  • The disagreements between the United States and Israel will not be easy to finesse. The United States and other world powers are scheduled to resume talks with Iran in Geneva on Nov. 7.
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