Similarities to Iraq Surge Plan Mask Risks in Afghanistan
NEWS ANALYSIS
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: December 4, 2009
WASHINGTON – President Obama strongly opposed President George W. Bush’s surge in Iraq during his presidential campaign, and even now he has never publicly acknowledged that it was largely successful.
But in the White House Situation Room a little more than a month ago, he told his aides, “It turned out to be a good thing.” And as many of Mr. Obama’s own advisers have recounted in recent days in interviews, the decision on the surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan by next summer was at least partly inspired by the success of the effort in Iraq, which Mr. Bush’s aides say is their best hope that historians will give them some credit when the history of a highly problematic war is written.
China under pressure to play key role at Copenhagen climate summit
China, the largest greenhouse-gas emitter, will not take on emissions caps but has announced its first numerical target. The US and EU are likely to push for more at Copenhagen climate summit.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the December 4, 2009 edition
BEIJING – As the world’s worst greenhouse-gas emitter, China will be under especially intense pressure at next week’s climate change summit in Copenhagen to play a key role in cutting the world’s carbon emissions.Beijing, though, is well prepared to defend its corner, Chinese and foreign experts say, in the expected battle between rich and poor nations over who should do what to avert potentially catastrophic global warming.
The steps it is already taking to reduce emissions, along with a new target-setting pledge to do more, put China in “a unique and convenient position in the slipstream behind the US,” says Jørgen Delman, a professor of China studies at the University of Copenhagen.
A bill before the US Congress would cut American CO2 emissions around 6 percent from 1990 by 2020. That is well short both of the developing country demands for a 40 percent cut, and of other developed countries’ goals.
China has refused to set any cap on its CO2 emissions; as a developing country it is spared the obligation to do so under the Kyoto Protocol.
USA
In e-mails, science of warming is hot debate
Stolen files of ‘Climate-gate’ suggest some viewpoints on change are disregarded
By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 5, 2009
It began with an anonymous Internet posting, and a link to a wonky set of e-mails and files. Stolen, apparently, from a research center in Britain, the files showed the leaders of climate-change science discussing flaws in their own data, and seemingly scheming to muzzle their critics.Now it has mushroomed into what is being called “Climate-gate,” a scandal that has done what many slide shows and public-service ads could not: focus public attention on the science of a warming planet.Except now, much of that attention is focused on the science’s flaws. Leaked just before international climate talks begin in Copenhagen — the culmination of years of work by scientists to raise alarms about greenhouse-gas emissions — the e-mails have cast those scientists in a political light and given new energy to others who think the issue of climate change is all overblown.
Ex-governors getting back in the running
As many as many as six former state chief executives around the U.S., including California’s Jerry Brown, may be on the ballot next year. Says Iowa’s Terry Branstad: ‘I know I could do this better.’
By Mark Z. Barabak
December 5, 2009
Jerry Brown has fashioned a career alone on the cutting edge of politics, but as he looks ahead to 2010, the California attorney general finds himself in the midst of an unusual pack: former governors eyeing a return to their old jobs.At least four, and perhaps as many as six, ex-governors may be on the ballot around the country next year, a pattern apparently without precedent or any clear-cut explanation, beyond the fact that few jobs in American politics beat the chance to run your own state, even in these difficult times.
“It just makes me sick, thinking ‘I know I could do this better,’ ” said Iowa’s former Republican governor, Terry E. Branstad, who is returning to politics to seek a fifth term after more than 10 years away.
Europe
Silvio Berlusconi linked to mafia in court evidence
Jailed hitman says clan boss boasted of ties before Italian PM entered politics
Tom Kington in Rome
guardian.co.uk
A jailed mafia hitman has linked Silvio Berlusconi to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, telling a Turin court that a clan boss convicted for a spate of deadly bombings boasted of ties to Berlusconi in the early 1990s, just before the Italian prime minister entered politics.Gaspare Spatuzza, a mob killer turned state witness, said today that boss Giuseppe Graviano told him Berlusconi and his business partner Marcello Dell’Utri had “practically placed the country in our hands”.
Spatuzza spoke from behind a hospital screen and a line of police officers in an underground courtroom during an appeal launched by Dell’Utri, now a senator in Berlusconi’s Freedom People party, against his nine-year sentence for collaborating with the mafia.
90 killed as blast rips through nightclub in Russian city of Perm
From The Times
December 5, 2009
Tony Halpin in Moscow
At least 90 people were killed and scores more injured after a fireworks display apparently went catastrophically wrong at a nightclub in the Russian city of Perm late last night.A blast ripped through the Lame Horse Club in the city centre as employees and their families were enjoying a celebration party to mark the eighth anniversary of its opening. At least 60 were reported to have been treated in hospital for injuries.
“Ninety people were killed, bodies were evacuated from the scene,” Igor Orlov, the Perm region’s Public Security Minister told Interfax news.
Asia
Taliban strikes heart of the Pakistani army
Forty people killed in gun, grenade and suicide bomb attack in garrison quarter
By Omar Waraich in Rawalpindi Saturday, 5 December 2009
Senior Pakistani army officers were targeted yesterday in a bloody militant suicide bomb attack that killed at least 40 people. In the most high-profile assault on the army since it launched a major ground offensive against Taliban militants in South Waziristan two months ago, suicide bombers and gunmen laid siege to a two-storey mosque in Rawalpindi’s garrison quarter.They opened indiscriminate fire on a group of worshippers and hurling grenades at the crowd before two bombers detonated their explosives. At least six military officers were among the dead, as well as three regular soldiers. Some 17 children were also killed.
Children among 11,000 Tamil ‘fighters’ held in rehabilitation
From The Times
December 5, 2009
Times Correspondent in Trincomalee
Sri Lanka is holding more than 11,000 Tamil prisoners without charge in closely guarded “rehabilitation centres”, despite the Government’s claim that it released all Tamil civilians from detention centres this week.The Times can reveal that the group of prisoners, whose exact number has been unknown since the Sri Lankan Government blocked access to them from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in July, is allegedly a “combatant category” that includes former Tamil Tiger (LTTE) fighters.
Middle East
Neda Agha Soltan’s family accuse Iran of her killing
The family of a young woman shot dead at a protest following Iran’s disputed presidential election has accused the security forces of killing her.
The BBCIt is the most strongly-worded statement the family of Neda Agha Soltan have made since her death.
The family’s accusation follows the spread of an Iranian government-proposed theory blaming a conspiracy of western governments for the killing.
Ms Soltan was filmed as she lay dying and the video uploaded to the internet.
Her death became iconic in the protesters’ struggle against what they said was the fraudulent election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“I openly declare that no one, apart from the government, killed Neda. Her killer can only be from the government,” Ali Agha Soltan told the BBC’s Persian service by telephone from Iran.
Israel closes sole oil and gas terminal on Gaza border
Israel has closed the Nahal Oz crossing into Gaza for security reasons. Host to the sole oil and gas terminal serving Gaza, it’s also the site of several recent militant attacks.
By Erin Cunningham | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the December 4, 2009 edition
GAZA CITY – The population of the Gaza Strip is facing an acute cooking gas shortage this winter, after a unilateral Israeli decision in October to permanently close the sole oil and gas terminal between the coastal Palestinian territory and the Jewish state.The Nahal Oz crossing has been shut down for “security reasons,” an official with the Israeli coordination office for the Gaza Strip said, adding that it will only act as “a backup” when the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south is too congested.
Nahal Oz, located in Gaza’s north and just east of Gaza City, has been the site or in the vicinity of a number of deadly attacks carried out by Palestinian militants. The terminal itself is visibly damaged from a mortar attack in 2008.
But Kerem Shalom does not have the proper infrastructure to meet the territory’s cooking gas needs, local businessmen say. The move has had a significant impact across the territory, forcing bakeries to either close or shift to other fuel sources, compelling hospitals to suspend cooking and laundry services, and threatening families’ abilities to cook and heat their homes as winter closes in.
Africa
From coup to counter-coup? Guinea plunged into chaos
With military leader recovering in Morocco after a gun attack, the African state nervously awaits next chapter in its turbulent history
By Daniel Howden, Africa correspondent Saturday, 5 December 2009
Guinea’s military leader Moussa “Dadis” Camara was last night being treated at an army hospital in Morocco after being shot following an argument with one of his aides. Soldiers were out in force on the streets of Conakry, the capital of the West African country, amid fears of a counter-coup to topple the army major who came to power one year ago.His sudden departure for Rabat appeared to confirm reports that he was seriously wounded. The Guinea leader has not dared to leave the country since taking over in a bloodless coup last December. Blaise Compaore, the President of Burkina Faso, last night said Camara’s condition was “difficult but not desperate”. Mr Compaore, who has attempted to broker an end to the political crisis in Guinea, said Camara would have to undergo an operation “because he was hit by bullets”.
Jacob Zuma’s £5m home project unver fire over government funding
South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has been criticised after it emerged that the country’s government is helping to pay a £5 million bill for improvements at his rural homestead.
By Sebastien Berger In Johannesburg
Mr Zuma has reportedly spent £350,000 building new houses for two of this three wives in his compound in Nxamalala, a remote spot deep in KwaZulu-Natal that is still reached by a dirt road.
The homestead was further expanded with accommodation for Mr Zuma’s security staff, along with a clinic to provide medical facilities and a helipad.
The Mail and Guardian newspaper said that a police station, visitor centre, guest house, and 40-space car park were also being planned.
Mr Zuma’s office insisted that the South African president had paid for works within the living quarters, while the government had financed other construction.