WIN SOME, LOSE SOME — Almost the same day that foreign ambassadors in Washington received invitations to attend Wednesday’s presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan ruler, they got letters from the Chinese ambassador urging them to boycott the ceremony. Predictably, the decision to honor the Dalai Lama has drawn strong protests from the Chinese government, which controls his mountainous country. The presentation was initiated by the U.S. Congress, and is supported by the Bush administration. But Congress also has plans to declare the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in [...]
WASHINGTON — The Army’s $200-billion Future Combat Systems — the centerpiece of the service’s “network-centric” modernization — has been buffeted by cash shortages, insurmountable engineering obstacles and criticism that lighter, smarter, sensor-laden vehicles are not what the Army needs to fight tomorrow’s wars. The program aims to equip 15 of the Army’s roughly 70 combat brigades with new robots and hybrid diesel-electric manned vehicles connected by a secure radio network and equipped with high-tech sensors. After a difficult 2006 that saw four of FCS’ robot designs axed due to budget constraints, this year the decade-old program achieved several milestones, wrapping [...]
JERUSALEM — With Condoleezza Rice in town and multiple meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in recent weeks, there is little doubt that the season of peace has come again to the Middle East: Peace, as in peace process. Few people, however, seem persuaded that an end to the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is at hand. In fact, the word one hears more often these days is “Intifada” — as in Palestinian uprising; as in a new outbreak of deadly violence between the two sides. That may seem odd, considering that top-level government officials from the United States, [...]
