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BY: Mark Ericson | Diplomatic Courier
Accounting for over half the of the world’s $45 trillion economy it’s no wonder the relationship between the U.S. and China and their interdependence has become the headline. In the past calling out China's human rights and environmental transgressions seemed to be in the U.S. realm of responsibility, but now one misstep and the entire wealth of the world could all come falling down.
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BY: Charles Hutzler | The National
The US president Barack Obama said yesterday that the US and its allies were discussing possible new penalties to bring fresh pressure on Iran for defying international attempts to halt its contested nuclear programme.
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The Economist
Israel’s prime minister, came under pressure this week when news leaked of a new plan to build 900 homes in the occupied Jerusalem suburb of Gilo. His aides say that he knew nothing about the scheme before a local planning committee considered it.
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BY: Matt McAllester | Global Post
Teitel’s arrest and indictment have reminded Israelis of a long-held national fear: that beyond the conflict with the Palestinians there is another enemy, the enemy within that is the extreme wing of the settler movement, many of them originally Americans.
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BY: John Leland | The New York Times
A leader of a Sunni Awakening Council was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murder on Thursday, setting off charges that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government was trying to weaken the Sunni movement, which is credited with much of the reduction of sectarian violence here since 2006.
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BY: Joshua Partlow | The Washington Post
President Hamid Karzai set two ambitious goals in his inauguration speech Thursday: to have Afghan soldiers and police take full responsibility for security within the next five years and to root out the pervasive corruption that hobbled his first administration.
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BY: Sharon LaFraniere | The New York Times
Like parents everywhere, mothers and fathers in Namibia, an impoverished southern African nation, worry about college costs and opportunities for their children. The Chinese government has stepped forward to help — for a select and powerful few.
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BY: Loro Horta | Asia Sentinel
Is it a boon to Africa as China and many commentators maintain or is it a return to neo-colonial exploitation, as many critics claim? The truth, as usual, may be somewhere between the two.
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BY: Horand Knaup | Der Spiegel
A dead captain, soldiers onboard civilian freighters, record ransoms and shoot-outs almost daily: After two months of relative calm, pirate season off the coast of Somalia has resumed. The stakes are higher than ever.
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BY: Mark Hertsgaard | The Nation
The transformation is so pervasive that the new greenery is visible from outer space via satellite pictures. With climate change, much more of the planet's land will be hot and arid like the Sahel. It only makes sense, then, to learn from the quiet green miracle unfolding there.
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BY: Andrew MacDowall | World Politics Review
While continuing to line up its bid for European Union membership, Serbia is also the focus of Russia's renewed interest in the Balkans. In October, Belgrade signed deals with Moscow that include support for a controversial oil pipeline, a generous loan deal and the establishment of a Russian base in Serbia that has the potential for military use. Some even see Serbia's deepening ties with Russia as inimical to its pro-Western stance. But for the time being, Serbia's canny government is strengthening its own position through what amounts to a balancing act.
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BY: Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger | The New York Times
Leaders of the 27 countries of the European Union on Thursday night chose Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian prime minister, as the European Union’s first president, and Catherine Ashton of Britain, currently the bloc’s trade commissioner, as its high representative for foreign policy. The vote was unanimous.
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BY: Igor Jovanovic and Anes Alic | ISN Security Watch
As Kosovo goes it alone for the first time in local elections, the results are less significant than the voting process itself, as some Kosovo Serbs defy Belgrade’s boycott demand in a move that may cause a major rift between Serb communities in Kosovo.
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BY: Erica Marat | Eurasia Daily Monitor
Less than two months before Kazakhstan takes over the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Kazakh NGO’s are warning the international community about the rapidly worsening human rights situation in the country.
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BY: Mina Miradova | Eurasianet
A governing party politician’s proposal to postpone Azerbaijan’s 2010 parliamentary elections "until the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is resolved" has met with both support and censure from President Ilham Aliyev’s Yeni Azerbaijan Party. While senior party officials now dismiss the proposal as "a joke," the idea suggests that some politicians are keen to test the outer limits of the ruling party’s 16-year hold on power.
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BY: Blaine Harden | The Washington Post
With none of the tension presented by a rising China and a willful Japan, President Obama's visit Thursday to South Korea was short, congenial in substance and splendid in form.
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BY: Eli Lake, Sara A. Carter, and Barbara Slavin | The Washington Times
Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, has fled a Pakistani city on the border with Afghanistan and found refuge from potential U.S. attacks in the teeming Pakistani port city of Karachi with the assistance of Pakistan's intelligence service, three current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.
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BY: Sara Miller Llana and Tim Rogers | The Christian Science Monitor
The most recent Latin American leader to overturn presidential term limits is Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega.
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BY: Enzo Nussio | ISN Security Watch
Even though Colombia has made progress in terms of security during the Uribe administration, the violent history of the northern municipality Tierralta shows why conflict will not come to a prompt end, as new paramilitary groups exploit the coca-rich area and terrorize civilians.
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BY: Juan O. Tamayo | Miami Herald
Titled New Castro, Same Cuba, the report by Human Rights Watch details a skein of cruel pressures on dissidents, relatives and friends that contradict initial hopes that Raúl Castro would be different.