A fresh slate at the Pentagon for Obama
President’s choices could have lasting consequences for national security agenda
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON – With critical decisions ahead on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama is about to receive an unusual opportunity to reshape the Pentagon’s leadership, naming a new defense secretary as well as several top generals and admirals in the next several months.
It is a rare confluence of tenure calendars and personal calculations, coming midway through Mr. Obama’s first term and on the heels of an election that challenged his domestic policies. His choices could have lasting consequences for his national security agenda, perhaps strengthening his hand over a military with which he has often clashed, and are likely to have an effect beyond the next election, whetherhe wins or loses.
Nuclear bomb material found for sale on Georgia black market
Exclusive: Georgia trial reveals how sting netted highly enriched uranium that had been smuggled via train inside lead-lined cigarette box
Julian Borger in Tbilisi
Highly enriched uranium that could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in Georgia.Two Armenians, a businessman and a physicist, have pleaded guilty to smuggling highly enriched uranium (HEU) into Georgia in March, stashing it in a lead-lined package on a train from Yerevan to Tbilisi.
Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, informed other heads of state of the sting operation at a nuclear summit in Washington in April, but no details about the case have been made public until now.
USA
Now in Power, G.O.P. Vows Cuts in State Budgets
By MONICA DAVEY and MICHAEL LUO
Published: November 7, 2010
Republicans who have taken over state capitols across the country are promising to respond to crippling budget deficits with an array of cuts, among them proposals to reduce public workers’ benefits in Wisconsin, scale back social services in Maine and sell off state liquor stores in Pennsylvania, endangering the jobs of thousands of state workers. States face huge deficits, even after several grueling years of them, and just as billions of dollars in stimulus money from Washington is drying up.
For many businesses, 2010 midterm election campaign was a winner
By Dan Eggen and T.W. Farnam
Washington Post Staff Writers
The 2010 election season was good for Design Cuisine of Arlington, which took in more than $500,000 in catering fees. The Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, Calif., made about $50,000 holding Republican fundraisers. And at Butterfield’s Golf Car Sales in Montvale, Va., owner David Helms rang up $300 in cart rentals for the campaign of Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R).“That may pay for the light bill for about a week,” Helms said. “But we’ll certainly take it.”
Europe
Russian outrage over new attack on journalist
By Shaun Walker in Moscow Monday, 8 November 2010
The Russian authorities yesterday faced demands to prosecute the attackers of a journalist branded a “traitor” by a youth organisation linked to the country’s ruling party.Oleg Kashin, 30, a reporter for the Kommersant daily, was set upon by two unknown assailants late on Friday. They apparently waited for him with a bunch of flowers outside the doorway of his apartment block in Moscow.
Mr Kashin, who covered youth political movements for the newspaper and was one of its best-known reporters, was beaten, leaving him with a broken leg and jaw and a fractured skull. He remained in an induced coma in a hospital in Moscow yesterday.
Pope denounces gay marriage and abortion in Spain
The Irish Times – Monday, November 8, 2010
JANE WALKER in Madrid
POPE BENEDICT has denounced abortion and gay marriage, recently legalised in Spain, at a Mass to consecrate Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia church as a basilica in another criticism of what he called Spain’s “aggressive secularism”.The service at the still unfinished building was attended by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, but not by the prime minister.
Although Mass has been held in one of the crypts of the building in the past, yesterday’s Mass was the first to be celebrated in the newly consecrated main church nave.
Queen Sofia received communion from the pope, but King Juan Carlos did not. Three hundred priests emerged through the main door to distribute the Eucharist to the thousands of faithful in the streets outside.
Middle East
Police demolition of mosque incites riot as Israeli Arabs vow to rebuild
The Irish Times – Monday, November 8, 2010
MARK WEISS in Jerusalem
RIOTS ERUPTED at the weekend in the southern Israeli Arab city of Rahat as security forces destroyed a mosque.Some 700 police in full riot gear used tear gas to disperse crowds who threw stones to try and prevent the demolition.
Residents observed a general strike yesterday in protest at the action, and large numbers of police remained in the Bedouin city of 52,000 last night to prevent fresh disturbances. Shortly after the demolition, residents began rebuilding the mosque.
Police claimed the mosque was constructed illegally with funds provided by the northern branch of Israel’s anti-Zionist Islamic movement. The destruction was carried out after a court ruled the building took place on state land without a permit.
Iraqi leaders expected to form government
Iraqi leaders are expected to announce a national unity government at the end of a conference of major political parties, heralding the end of an eight month period of stalemate since the general election in March.
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
An upsurge in sectarian violence and growing anger over the payment of the world’s best parliamentary salaries to MPs that had met just once since the vote has put party leaders under increasing pressure to seal a power sharing deal.A spokesman for Nouri al-Maliki, the serving prime minister, claimed an agreement had been struck for him to remain in office.
Iraqiya, his main opponents who won most seats in the March election, denied that names had been agreed for for individual posts.
Asia
Burma poll marked by threats and low turnout
Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy opts out of taking part in election
By Andrew Buncombe and Phoebe Kennedy in Rangoon
Monday, 8 November 2010
Burma’s first election in 20 years was marked by low-turn out and reluctant voters yesterday as many people appeared to have decided there was little point participating in a poll considered skewed from the start.In cities such as Rangoon, the former capital, turn-out may have been as little as 30 per cent, some sources said, despite threats from the military authorities that people could be jailed if they failed to vote. Armed police and troops were patrolling the streets.
China builds a ‘new Silk Road’ to pave over its troubles
The restive Urumqi area of western China is being cemented to Beijing by a billion-dollar investment into rail, road and air links.
By David Eimer in Urumqi
The new Silk Road begins and ends in the bustle of the vast Hualing Wholesale Mall in Urumqi, the desert-ringed capital of Xinjiang Province in the far west of China. To the shoppers who flock here from the eight other countries that Xinjiang borders, it is a retail paradise where the prices are up to 100% cheaper than at home – be it for CD players and cookers or TVs and toys.Now Beijing is planning a multi-billion dollar expansion of the province’s rail, road and air links, turning it into a key trading hub with central Asia, Russia and the Middle East – just as it was a thousand years ago when the Silk Road connected China to the outside world.
Africa
A lesson for Africa?
If southern Sudan secedes from Khartoum it could send a message to other separatist groups on the continent.
Thembisa Fakude
The past decade has seen the emergence of a number of new countries. But, with the exception of East Timor – which became the 21st century’s first new sovereign state on May 20, 2002 – they are all still struggling to gain full recognition.So what motivates constituencies within states to opt for independence?
The reasons vary from place to place. In Eastern Europe, Russia and the countries neighbouring it came together to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) largely for economic and military reasons. But after the establishment of the UN in 1945 and subsequent treaties guaranteeing security and peace, most countries within the USSR gradually started to denounce the union in favour of democratic and independent statehood. Repressive laws and adverse economic conditions further encouraged this.
Latin America
20 killed over weekend in Mexican border city
Seven were slain outside a home where people attended a party, Chihuahua state officials say. Eleven others were also killed Saturday, and two police officers were shot to death Sunday.
Associated Press
November 8, 2010
At least 20 people were killed in drug-gang violence over the weekend in this northern border city, including seven found dead outside one house.The seven men were believed to have been at a family party when they were gunned down Saturday night, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office in Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located. Five were found dead in a car, and the other two were shot at the entrance http://