Pacific leaders pledge to pursue free trade
U.S., China, Japan put aside differences as Obama wraps 10-day trip
Associated Press
YOKOHAMA, Japan – Leaders of the world’s three biggest economies – the U.S., China and Japan – all pledged Saturday to stick to free trade, apparently putting aside acrimony over currencies that has threatened to revive pressures for protectionism.
The vows against backsliding toward retaliatory trade moves came at an annual summit of Pacific Rim leaders, just a day after a fractious summit of the Group of 20 major economies in South Korea.
Rescue Workers Train in the Disneyland of Terror
‘Disaster City’
By Samiha Shafy
The Japanese delegation seems mesmerized by the sweating firefighters hanging from ropes in front of a building, as they saw holes into the walls. It’s noon in College Station, Texas. The sun is directly overhead, and the air is hot, humid and still.A US military Black Hawk helicopter is circling in the sky above the Japanese group. Plumes of smoke rise into the air in the distance, past collapsed houses, piles of rubble and the remains of a derailed Amtrak train. The smoke is coming from buildings and wrecked planes filled with straw..
USA
I.R.S. Sits on Data Pointing to Missing Children
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Published: November 12, 2010
For parents of missing children, any scrap of information that could lead to an abductor is precious.
Three years into an excruciating search for her abducted son, Susan Lau got such a tip. Her estranged husband, who had absconded with their 9-year-old from Brooklyn, had apparently filed a tax return claiming the boy as an exemption.Investigators moved quickly to seek the address where his tax refund had been mailed. But the Internal Revenue Service was not forthcoming.
Opposition to U.S. trial likely to keep mastermind of 9/11 attacks in detention
By Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will probably remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, according to Obama administration officials.
The administration has concluded that it cannot put Mohammed on trial in federal court because of the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York. There is also little internal support for resurrecting a military prosecution at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The latter option would alienate liberal supporters.
Europe
Wanted: ideas for how to kick-start Paris nightlife
Conference looks at ways to resurrect ‘fun capital of the world’
By John Lichfield in Paris Saturday, 13 November 2010
Paris, city of light and city of lovers, is in danger of becoming the city of lights-out and the city of sleepers.A two-day official conference, ending today, will suggest ways of waking up an increasingly somnolent city once regarded as the fun capital of the world.
The “parliament of the night”, sponsored by the Paris town hall, is considering, among other things, later hours for public transport, subsidies for the soundproofing of clubs and the creation of “ghettos of fun”, or dedicated clubland districts where noisy all-night activities will be welcomed.
Merkel would lose an election, poll reveals
The Irish Times – Saturday, November 13, 2010
DEREK SCALLY in Berlin
GERMANY’S ECONOMY is booming and dole queues haven’t been as short in 20 years. But if German voters went to the polls tomorrow, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government would be ousted after just a year in office.That’s the verdict of yesterday’s ARD public television poll, giving Dr Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) just 31 per cent support, with a disastrous 5 per cent for her junior coalition partner, the Free Democrats (FDP).
A surge in support for the opposition Green Party means they could return to office with their former coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), with 23 and 26 per cent support respectively. The Left Party is steady 10 per cent.
Middle East
The village built on thorny ground
Life is about to getql more complicatedql for a village on the Israel-Lebanon border, writes qlSheera Frenkel.
November 13, 2010
THERE’S no line marking the divide between north and south Ghajar, a village that straddles Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, but soon there could be an international border between the two now that Israel has decided to accept a United Nations demarcation line.For the 2200 ethnic Syrian inhabitants – who carry Israeli passports – long at the nexus of one of the region’s most complicated territorial disputes, life is about to become still more complicated. Israel is giving the northern half to the UN peacekeeping force and keeping the southern part, which according to all maps belongs to Syria.
Middle East doves energized by election
By Ira Chernus
Palestine as America’s next Vietnam? Like all historical analogies, it’s far from perfect. We aren’t about to send the United States Army to the West Bank or Gaza to kill and die in a war that can’t be won. Where else in the world, though, is American weaponry and political power so obviously used to suppress a Vietcong-like movement of national liberation (a bill the Taliban hardly fit)?And what other conflict is as politically divisive as the Israeli-Palestinian one? More than the Afghan war, the struggle at the heart of the Middle East evokes the kind of powerful passions here that once marked the debate over Vietnam, pitting hawks against doves. Not that the progressive media are yet portraying it that way. They’re more likely to give us an increasingly outdated picture of an all-powerful Jewish “Israel lobby”, which supposedly has a lock on US policy and dominates the rest of us.
Asia
More questions than answers on a day of many rumours but no release
Saturday, 13 November 2010
By Phoebe Kennedy in Rangoon and Andrew Buncombe
A day of swirling expectation and excitement pulsing through Burma ended last night with many questions but few answers. Crucially, there was also no sign of the detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose release had been widely anticipated.During the day, hundreds of the democracy leader’s supporters had gathered outside the simple offices of her National League for Democracy (NLD) in the centre of Rangoon, spilling out of the few cramped rooms and on to the roadside. Inside, elderly party activists sat on the floor.
Africa
South Africa’s white farmers expand into Mozambique
The Irish Times – Saturday, November 13, 2010
BILL CORCORAN in Cape Town
INCREASING NUMBERS of white commercial farmers from South Africa are establishing themselves in countries across the continent because of fears a revised land reform programme being considered by government will curtail opportunities at home.About 800 South African commercial farmers have signed land deals to expand production into Mozambique over the past few years, according to the country’s largest commercial farming union AgriSA, and many others are considering options elsewhere.
Speaking ahead of a conference next week to discuss possible opportunities in Mozambique’s Gaza province, AgriSA deputy president Theo de Jager said South African farmers have received new land offers to grow crops in over 20 countries.
Revealed: Shell’s PR tricks in Nigeria
The oil company went into damage control after the execution of activists 15 years ago.
Eveline Lubbers and Andy Rowell
November 13, 2010
LONDON: Secret internal documents from Shell show that in the immediate aftermath of the execution of the Nigerian activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, the oil company adopted a PR strategy of cosying up to BBC editors and singling out non-government organisations it hoped to ”sway”.The documents reveal previously hidden efforts by the company to deflect the PR storm that engulfed it after the Nigerian activist was hanged by the country’s military government. Shell faced accusations that it had colluded with the government over the deaths of the writer and other activists..
Latin America
Teotihuacan ruins explored by a robot
Teotihuacan: The grainy footage shot by the robot was presented Wednesday by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. It shows a narrow, open space left after the tunnel was intentionally closed off between A.D. 200 and 250 and filled with debris nearly to the roof.
By Jorge Barrera, Associated Press / November 12, 2010
The first robotic exploration of a pre-Hispanic ruin in Mexico has revealed that a 2,000-year-old tunnel under a temple at the famed Teotihuacan ruins has a perfectly carved arch roof and appears stable enough to enter, archaeologists announced Wednesday.
Archaeologists lowered the remote-controlled, camera-equipped vehicle into the 12-foot-wide (4-meter) corridor and sent wheeling through it to see if it was safe for researchers to enter. The one-foot (30-cm) wide robot was called “Tlaloque 1” after the Aztec rain god.