Archive for December, 2009

Pakistan’s interior minister appealed for calm on Tuesday in the country’s commercial capital Karachi, where shopowners surveyed gutted premises a day after a suicide bomber killed 43 people and triggered a city-centre riot.
The bombing of a Shi’ite Muslim procession in Karachi underscored multiple security challenges facing the nuclear-armed U.S. ally at a volatile time for [...]

Iranian authorities continued arresting opposition members on Tuesday, as hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed Western governments for supporting anti-government protests since Sunday in which at least eight people died.
“Americans and Zionists are the sole audience of a play they have commissioned and sold out. A nauseating play is performed,” the president was quoted by state [...]

The Israeli cabinet approved listing some Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank as “national priority zones,” entitling the communities to millions of dollars of extra state funding.
  
The decision is certain to stir furore as it comes just weeks after Israel instituted a 10-month moratorium on new building permits in the settlements after months of [...]

Thailand detained five men after they made an emergency landing in Bangkok with a cargo plane from North Korea full of heavy weapons, ministers and officials said.
The crew requested to land for refuelling at Don Mueang airport, where inspectors discovered a haul of weaponry including firearms and missiles, said deputy prime minister Suthep Thaungsuban.
“They declared that [...]

The White House turned up the heat on Iran, echoing EU concerns while warning of “credible consequences” if Tehran continues to defy international demands to curb its nuclear ambitions.
President Barack Obama’s administration also expressed concern about Iran’s alleged human rights abuses and warned Latin American countries to “think twice” about ties with what it calls [...]

British tourists coming to France for the ski season have been warned by their own government to be careful when drinking at high altitudes. The UK Foreign Office (FCO) campaign comes after more than 30 Britons died in Alpine ski resorts last year. Many died because they underestimated the risk of drinking at a high [...]

Inspectors from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Iran on Thursday to visit a new uranium enrichment site, diplomatic sources in Vienna said.
   
It is the third such visit by IAEA inspectors to Fordo, near the holy city of Qom, since Tehran admitted to the site’s existence on September 21.
   
Iran’s confession has [...]

US President Barack Obama said conflict can sometimes be morally justified as he received his Nobel peace prize with deep gratitude and “humility” in Oslo, Norway. 
Warning that war is “never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such,” Obama argued that it could “sometimes be not only necessary but morally justified,” saying negotiations would [...]

Russia and India stressed their strategic partnership on Monday, agreeing to boost military ties and cooperate in the civilian use of nuclear technology, but gave few details.
“We have discussed the key aspects of our economic and military-technical cooperation,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the start of their official talks [...]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s first envoy to North Korea flies to Pyongyang try to coax the prickly state back to the nuclear talks it quit a year ago, but without offering it any new incentives.
 
A senior U.S. official said Stephen Bosworth wants to assess whether the North really does plan to return to negotiations and [...]