Tag: Open Thread

The US leader also said Americans should not be “fearful” of the prospect that five men accused of masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks will go on trial in New York City, a notion that has sparked vocal domestic opposition.

“Guantanamo — we had a specific deadline that was missed,” Obama told US-based NBC television, in one of a flurry of interviews he gave in Beijing as his Asia tour winds down.

Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard described the meeting as “very constructive.”

Delegations included major greenhouse gas emitters, including China, the United States, India and Brazil, as well as several island nations and African states that are among the poorest in the world and most vulnerable to climate change.

TI’s annual corruption index showed how countries devastated by conflict have become overrun by graft with Iraq, Sudan and Myanmar accounting for the three other states in the bottom five of the chart.

The Berlin-based organisation said that countries whose infrastructure had been “torn apart” by conflict needed help from outside to prevent a culture of corruption taking root.

“A giant step is being taken today in announcing the opening of the major crime task force,” Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar told a news conference with the British and US ambassadors.

The government denied that the creation of the new entity was in response to huge Western pressure for concrete action to wipe out corruption.

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said the local election “is the most important since the proclamation of independence” as he voted in bright sunshine in Pristina, accompanied by his family.

According to the electoral commission, some 45 percent of the 1.5 million eligible voters voted for mayors and local representatives in what Serbia sees as a renegade southern province. Polls closed at 7:00 pm.

Saturday 11/7 – 1

• Wall anniversary celebrations kick off in Berlin

Monday 11/9 – 4

• Huge crowds mark fall of Berlin Wall
• Wall anniversary celebrations kick off in Berlin
• Merkel hails eastern courage at Wall anniversary
• Merkel thanks Gorbachev on Berlin Wall anniversary

Tuesday 11/10 – 4

• Berlin Wall anniversary inspires new calls for unity
• Leaders hail Wall fall, vow to topple new barriers
• Thousands cheer 20 years since fall of Berlin Wall
• Berlin Wall’s fall: Four former East Germans assess changed lives

In the second suicide strike to hit the troubled city in two days, the bomber detonated when police asked him to stop for a search, Peshawar district administration chief Sahibzada Anis told AFP.

The latest in a spate of devastating attacks comes as 30,000 troops press their most ambitious assault yet against Taliban militants in their mountain strongholds on the Afghan border.

So, let’s make the most of this beautiful day.

Since we’re together we might as well say:

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

Won’t you be my neighbor?

Won’t you please,

Won’t you please?

Please won’t you be my neighbor?

A similar bombing killed eight people in another northwest town, the latest in a spate of attacks as 30,000 troops press their most ambitious assault yet against Taliban militants in their mountain strongholds on the Afghan border.

The attack devastated the three-storey Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) provincial headquarters in the northwestern city of Peshawar, sending huge clouds of smoke spewing into the sky and destroying more than half of the building.

The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, a retired army general who commanded US forces in Afghanistan from 2005-2007, detailed his concerns in classified cables last week.

Eikenberry also expressed worries about the behavior of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was re-elected to a five year term in August polls tainted by widespread fraud, the Post said.

In London, Queen Elizabeth II led tributes to the war dead, including the growing number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. But the last British veteran of the 1914-18 conflict boycotted official events.

President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel rekindled the flame on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and vowed that their nations would never wage war on each other again.

President Barack Obama’s election returned the United States to active global efforts to fight climate change, but a year later Congress has yet to make good on promises to set the first-ever US caps on carbon emissions.

After a lobbying mission in the US Capitol by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Kerry said Tuesday the Senate, while unlikely to complete legislation, would give US negotiators an outline before the December 7-18 talks in the Danish capital.