Archive for December, 2009

Proven oil reserves in Arab countries topped 672 billion barrels in 2008, making up 57.7 percent of the world’s total… »

A US federal judge has dismissed all charges against five guards from US security firm Blackwater over the killing of 17 Iraqis in 2007. The five, contracted to defend US diplomatic personnel, were accused of opening fire on a crowd in… »

This map includes, for the winter season, monthly gas trade flows at each entry and exit point for participating countries. It also provides more general data on the annual gas supply-demand situation by… »

The United Nations must play a bigger role in trying to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the United States should not be the only mediator, a senior Arab official… »

Day by day, fears are growing that Greece or another weak country may default on its sovereign debt obligations, forcing the richer countries in Europe to ride to the rescue or risk having one or more of its most vulnerable members leave the 16-nation euro zone. Many European economists discount such a fracture as a… »

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s India visit is part of Japan’s growing economic and strategic engagement with that country. Given that the balance of power in Asia will be determined by events as much in the Indian Ocean rim as in East Asia, Tokyo is keen to work with New Delhi to promote peace and stability… »

The politics of the vast deserts and steppes of Central Asia will significantly determine the contours of any durable Afghan settlement. The implications for South Asia’s security will be far-reaching, too – by M.K…. »

Waziristan, headquarters of Islamist terror, has repelled outsiders for centuries. Now the Pakistani government is making a determined effort to control the… »

Africa’s rapidly growing population projected to see urbanisation, economic growth, health and climate… »

Under the Iraqi constitution, the next parliamentary elections should be held by the end of January 2010. However, the Elections Law which governed the 2005 elections needed to be revised and updated, and two issues in particular proved to be difficult and controversial. One had to do with the modality of voting, with the choice… »

China and 10 Southeast Asian nations will usher in the world’s third-largest free trade area. While many industries are eager for tariffs to fall on everything from textiles and rubber to vegetable oils and steel, a few are nervously waiting to see whether the agreement will mean boom or bust for their businesses. Trade between… »

The map shows all the piracy and armed robbery incidents reported to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre during… »

This report constitutes the comparative analysis of data gathered from 11 cities
in seven European countries. It points out common trends and offers recommendations at the local, national, and international levels, including to the European Union (EU) and to international organisations. While not representative of the situation of all Muslims in these cities, this report does… »

The Commission’s three major findings are:
1. Cybersecurity is now one of the major national security problems facing the United States;
2. Decisions and actions must respect American values related to privacy and civil liberties; and
3. Only a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international aspects of cybersecurity will improve the… »

(PDF) – Population growth is exacerbating resource scarcity, above all in developing countries. Improved family planning is one way of alleviating this pressure, another is immigration. In both cases poor nations require increased international… »

Does the president really believe he can achieve major reforms in healthcare, education, climate change, national finances and taxes, and win in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time? What if the division of Washington’s energies leads to the sad result of being strong nowhere and weak – or compromised, or only half-achieving, or even… »

Iran on Wednesday denied as “baseless” a report it was close to clinching a deal to import 1,350 tons (1,372 tonnes) of purified uranium ore from Kazakhstan to restock its depleted… »

Today, the cabinet papers from Thatcher’s earliest days in office are finally released under the 30-year rule. The 1979 files provide a fascinating insight into the way she took a grip, first of her ministers, then the country with a pugnacious style that is revealed in hostile handwritten remarks in the margins of previously secret… »

A series of criminal trials in Chongqing, one of China’s biggest cities, is spotlighting a byproduct of the country’s rapid social and economic change: the spread of organized crime. The Chongqing crackdown is the largest local operation against organized crime in 60 years of Communist Party rule. Some 800 people have been formally arrested and… »

Europe’s most important technology is of the institutional kind. However much we criticize it for its irrelevance in the world, the EU is palpable proof that it is possible to apply effective supranational solutions to problems in which irreconcilable state interests are at… »

The German economy could recover more strongly in 2010 than many economists have been predicting, because growth is being boosted by the improving global situation and the government’s stimulus package. But that doesn’t mean the crisis is over — risks loom from the second half of… »

Britain is in a poor position to condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh unless it accepts its history of drug dealing to… »

President Umaru Yar’adua appears likely to leave office soon. The likely succession challenges come after a period during which President Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar’adua’s predecessor, had successfully coordinated and promoted an African response to a host of regional crises, including those in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cote d’Ivoire. During the current president’s periodic illnesses, Nigeria has… »

(PDF) – # Yemen presents a potent combination of problems for policy-makers confronting the prospect of state failure in this strategically important Red Sea country. It is the poorest state in the Arab world, with high levels of unemployment, rapid population growth and dwindling water resources.
# President Saleh faces an intermittent civil war in the… »

With the increasing importance of Asian emerging markets in the world economy, rebalancing growth in developing Asia toward more reliance on domestic demand and less on exports is an important component of the global effort to stabilize world financial and economic… »

Russia’s Lukoil Holdings and Norway’s Statoil ASA Tuesday signed an initial deal to develop the Iraqi supergiant West Qurna Phase 2 oil field, 16 days after the closure of the country’s second postwar licensing auction. The two companies won the field by pledging to lift crude oil production to 1.8 million barrels a day for… »

The U.S. and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets in Yemen for a potential retaliation strike. U.S. special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential al Qaeda targets in Yemen, one of the officials said. This is part of a new classified agreement with the Yemeni government… »

Since the election, a series of canceled dinners, diplomatic demarches, and publicly and privately broken promises from the new government has vexed senior White House officials, causing new concern about the U.S. friendship with its closest Asian ally. The worry extends beyond U.S. officials to other leaders in Southeast Asia, who are nervous about anything… »

The Russian Far East, the eastern edge of Siberia that borders China and the Pacific Ocean, has only 6 million people, and that number is dropping fast. Just across the border, though, the three provinces of northeastern China have about 110 million people. Meanwhile, the Russian Far East has substantial reserves of oil, natural gas,… »

The United States and its allies are weighing focused sanctions against Iran’s leadership rather than broad-based penalties that they fear could harm the protest movement, officials and diplomats… »

Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded. His decision to include dozens of isolated settlements in the national priority map, immediately after announcing the construction freeze in areas beyond the Green Line, has achieved its aim: The settler protest against the freeze… »

Two years ago, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, bid $3.4 billion for the rights to mine deposits near the village of Aynak. Over the next 25 years, it plans to extract about 11 million tons of copper — an amount equal to one-third of all the known copper reserves in… »

Natural catastrophe losses were far lower in 2009 than in 2008 due to the absence on the whole of major catastrophes and a very benign North Atlantic hurricane season. However, the total number of destructive natural hazard events was above the long-term average, 850 being recorded in all. Consequently, despite the lack of really disastrous… »

The HIIK annually publishes the Conflict Barometer, which describes recent trends in conflict development, escalations,… »

A report one year after Operation Cast Lead. The international community has betrayed the people of Gaza by failing to back their words with effective action to secure the ending of the Israeli blockade which is preventing reconstruction and recovery. The Israeli authorities have allowed only 41 truckloads of all construction materials into Gaza since… »

What kind of military power does Britain wish to be 10 years from now? As a new decade approaches, the question is increasingly on the minds of the country’s politicians and defence chiefs. In the past 10 years, the UK has been Europe’s leading military power, with the largest troop deployment after the US in… »

In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen. The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces,… »

The killing of the three Fatah operatives in Nablus by the IDF over the weekend could trigger a third intifada, Fatah officials warned on Sunday. But the new intifada, they said, would be different from the first two – this time it would be directed against the Palestinian Authority. During the funerals of the three… »

The fact is that the United States is no longer willing, or perhaps even able, to select who governs from Tegucigalpa, or anywhere else in the region. Looking back at the history of the hemisphere, this fact is remarkable–and certainly transformative. For the first time in centuries, the United States doesn’t seem to care much… »

The U.S. Defense Department is exploring how it might devise a single nuclear warhead modernization package that could be used for updating different weapons in both the Navy and Air Force arsenals, according to a senior official. The U.S. Defense Department is exploring how it might devise a single nuclear warhead modernization package that could… »

An international discourse of China-in-Africa has emerged, particularly in Western countries with dense links to Africa: the US, UK and France. While China’s presence in Africa should be critically examined, interest in it in the West is skewed by elite perceptions of China as a rival for resources and influence in Africa and as… »

The Abu Dhabi Government has chosen a group of South Korean firms to build the country’s first nuclear power stations, advancing the UAE’s goal to become the first Arab nation to harness atomic energy on a commercial scale. The US$20 billion (Dh73.47bn) award for four power stations to be built by 2020 will supply up… »

Are we living through the end of the domination of the world by the civilisation that arose in western Europe in the wake of the Renaissance and Reformation – the civilisation that, propelled by the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, spread across the Atlantic and as far as the Antipodes, finally reaching its apogee in… »

For the first time in 10 years the number of immigrants to Israel has risen this year, according to Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky and Immigration and Absorption Minister Sofa Landver. In 2009, 16,244 people immigrated – a 17 percent jump over last year’s 13,859. The number of immigrants from English-speaking countries has also increased… »

Judging from the events of Ashura, however, the protests now seem to carry the potential to turn into a full-scale civil disobedience campaign, not unlike the first intifada the Palestinians initiated against Israel in 1987. Such an uprising will mean continuous periods of strikes and civil disobedience, as well as more confrontations between members of… »

The attempted bombing of the Northwest Airlines flight exposes an unresolved tension at the heart of militant Islam – by Jason… »

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has a new headache to deal with today — Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Washington’s tolerance for his violence and provocations is running very thin. The recent demolition of the World War II monument in Georgia may be the last… »

The sordid business of blood diamonds was believed to have ended with the adoption in 2003 of the Kimberley Process, a UN-sanctioned agreement between 75 countries that import and export diamonds, diamond industry leaders and nongovernmental organizations. Its mission is to certify that diamonds on sale at the corner jeweler did not arrive there at… »

On the one hand, Cairo is denying access to national and international non-governmental convoys that demanded access into the Gaza Strip through the Egyptian border. Meanwhile, Egyptian officials say that the situation is already tense on the borders. One source who asked for strict anonymity said that Egyptian security has concrete evidence that Hamas activists… »

The relationship between China and Taiwan has been rapidly improving since the China-friendly administration of President Ma Ying-jeou was inaugurated in Taiwan in May 2008. In contrast, the Ma administration’s relations with Japan have always been fraught with concerns on the part of Japan, including that of Taiwan being swallowed up into China and Ma’s… »