For Obama, Focus Shifts From Engagement To Pursuit of Concerted, Tough Measures
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The disclosure of a second uranium enrichment site in Iran has led the Obama administration to shift the emphasis in its dealings with the Islamic republic — away from engagement and toward building an international consensus for sterner action against Tehran.
The effort to directly engage Iran was a hallmark of the early months of the administration, with President Obama offering a televised greeting in honor of the Persian New Year and sending private letters to the country’s supreme leader. But the gestures went largely unreciprocated. Now, while not shutting the door on engagement entirely, the United States and its allies plan to forcefully press the case that Tehran has been caught, red-handed, in yet another violation of international rules.
The dark secrets of the trillion-dollar oil trade
Tankers full of oil its owners don’t want to sell. Shady deals with brutal regimes. Vast profits. Pollution scandals. Cahal Milmo investigates a very murky business
Saturday, 26 September 2009
With a combined capacity for 313,000 tonnes of oil, the Delta Ios and the NS Burgas supertankers were launched two months ago to criss-cross the globe in search of trade. Instead, the vast vessels were to be found yesterday lying idle off the coast of Singapore after their owners were paid by two of the world’s richest and most secretive oil companies to turn them into floating petrochemical warehouses.At first glance, the decision by Trafigura Group and Vitol Holding BV to charter the newly built ships at an estimated cost of £47,000 a day to do nothing for up to four months in South-east Asia while laden with cargos of diesel worth at least £77m per vessel makes little economic sense.
USA
Republicans want answers in NEA flap
Yosi Sergant, a National Endowment for the Arts official, resigns after urging support for Obama’s community service efforts. Republican senators want assurances that the law wasn’t broken.
By Mike Boehm
September 26, 2009
Ten Republican senators have written to National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman, expressing concern that the Obama administration may have violated federal law by trying to use the agency for political purposes — something the White House and NEA have denied.The charges stem from an Aug. 10 teleconference in which the NEA’s communications director urged members of the arts community to help Obama’s efforts to spur volunteer community service.
Yosi Sergant was subsequently demoted by Landesman, and he resigned Thursday because he felt he was becoming a distraction for the agency.
Sources: Gitmo might not close by January
White House acknowledges unlikely to meet Obama’s promised deadline
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The White House acknowledged for the first time Friday that it might not be able to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay by January as President Barack Obama has promised.Senior administration officials told The Associated Press that difficulties in completing the lengthy review of detainee files and resolving thorny legal and logistical questions mean the president’s self-imposed January deadline may slip. Obama remains as committed to closing the facility as he was when, as one of his first acts in office, he pledged to shut it down, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to more freely discuss the sensitive issue. They said the White House still was hoping to meet the deadline through a stepped-up effort.
Europe
Chechnya president sues human rights activist over murder claim
• Group leader Oleg Orlov names Kadyrov’s ‘political guilt’
• Kadyrov seeks 10m roubles damages over Estemirova claim
Miriam Elder in Moscow
The Guardian, Saturday 26 September 2009
The reputation of Chechnya’s Kremlin-appointed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, was under question in a Moscow court today, as he launched a defamation suit against the leader of Russia’s leading human rights group, Memorial.Kadyrov is seeking 10m roubles (£207,800) in damages from Oleg Orlov, the chairman of Memorial, in the wake of the row over the kidnapping and murder of a human rights activist, Natalia Estemirova, in Grozny in July. Orlov had accused Kadyrov of being guilty of the murder, explaining in his defence today that he meant “political guilt”.
“I didn’t speak of his involvement, I spoke of his guilt. These are two different things,” Orlov told the court.
Has Ireland become a nation of yes men?
As the Celtic Tiger roared, it defiantly bit back at Europe by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty. On the eve of a new referendum, John Lichfield finds a repeat unlikely in a country left toothless by recession
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Come on a brief tour of Ireland, or as some locals now insist, “Direland”. Our first scene is the all-Ireland ploughing championships, a tent city the size of central Dublin near Athy, Co Kildare. Wind-tanned heroes on tractors are cutting the sod in “straight, neat and uniform” furrows.Inside a lunch tent, Michael, a 47-year-old farmer from Co Kilkenny, is ploughing through a steam-clouded plate of meat and vegetables. When the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty was rejected – and therefore frozen – by the people of Ireland 15 months ago, Michael voted No.
The treaty will come back, lightly annotated, to the Irish people in a second referendum next Friday.
Middle East
Why Iran confessed to secret nuclear site built inside mountain
At first it was one of many suspicious sites but forensic gathering of intelligence by the west eventually forced Iran to come clean
Julian Borger in New York and Patrick Wintour in Pittsburgh
The Guardian, Saturday 26 September 2009
The Qom uranium enrichment plant first appeared in 2006, in grey satellite photographs of the sort the world has become familiar with through the long years of the Iran crisis.North-east of the mosques of Qom, the theological heart of Iran, the revolutionary guard had established an anti-aircraft missile battery at the base of the mountain, western officials said.
As intelligence analysts tried to discover what the missiles were there to protect, satellite imagery began to reveal intensive activity at the side of the mountain. “There was extensive excavation and construction work under way,” a western official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Bribes firm ordered to pay £6m for breaching Iraq sanctions
From The Times
September 26, 2009
Frances Gibb, Legal Editor
A British company that admitted bribing ministers and officials in Ghana and Jamaica, and breaching sanctions in Iraq, was yesterday ordered to pay £6.6 million in fines and compensation.In the first prosecution brought in Britain against a company for overseas corruption, the bridge-building company Mabey & Johnson admitted employing “the white man’s handshake” to build trust and confidence before signing contracts.
The company’s “culture” of kickbacks in Iraq was said to have struck at the very heart of the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food programme designed to make life easier for the Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein.
Asia
Bird-eating frog among several new species found in Greater Mekong
From The Times
September 26, 2009
Chris Smyth
A bird-eating frog, a technicolour gecko with orange eyes and a bird that flies only when it is frightened are among dozens of new species discovered in an ecologically fragile part of Asia.Researchers in the Greater Mekong area of South-East Asia also found a tiger-striped pitviper, a new wild banana and, even rarer, two new types of mammal, a report for the wildlife charity WWF says.
However, conservationists fear that the discoveries, many of which are unique to small areas of jungle, river or mountains, are under threat from destructive development and climate change.
The most colourful of the finds is the Cat Ba leopard gecko, described as “a creature that appears to be from another world”. Large, dark orange eyes are set in a head decorated with a marble pattern, while its body is covered with leopard-like swirls, which scientists believe may provide camouflage in the forest. The rare gecko, confined to one small island in northern Vietnam, is already thought to be endangered.
In northern India, village elders order ‘honor killings’
The issue is especially of concern in Haryana, where members of the Jat ethnic community bar youth living within small clusters of villages from intermarrying. Defiance is met with threats, and death.
By Mark Magnier
September 26, 2009
Reporting from Matour, India – Ved Pal Maun, 27, was something of a catch in this small farm community northwest of New Delhi. But his family members rejected several marriage offers; they said he just wasn’t ready.Truth was he was holding out for a particular woman, 18-year-old Sonia Banwal of the neighboring village of Singhwal.
Falling in love with the girl next door would be cause for joy and celebration in many countries. But in parts of rural India, ancient traditions are rooted more deeply than the tall corn and lush green rice plants.
Latin America
For Mexicans seeking to cross the US border, it’s not just about jobs anymore
New surveys find the recession has reduced Mexican immigration, but that millions still want to come to the US – and some more for safety than for jobs.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the September 25, 2009 edition
MEXICO CITY – New data about Mexican immigration to the United States find that the evaporation of jobs during the US recession has done little to dissuade millions of Mexicans from wanting to move across the border amid growing signs that many Mexicans are motivated to leave home not by the lure of higher wages but by fears for their safety.To be sure, economic opportunity is still the main driver behind Mexican immigration. That’s meant the overall number of Mexican’s in the US has shrunk slightly in the past year as construction came to a standstill and suburbanites put their gardens at the bottom of their priority lists.
But an expected wave of reverse migration, in which unemployed Mexicans would stream back home to their cities and villages, has been more like a trickle. New US census data shows only a slight decline in the US foreign-born population in 2008. And a new study by the Pew Research Center shows that one in three Mexicans – about 35 million people – would head to “el norte” if they could.