dc_subsection_news_in_brief_November_2009

November 2009

Honduran Election Seeks to Restore Degree of Political Stability
November 30, 2009—Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Honduras conducted a heavily observed presidential election yesterday, months after leftist President Manuel Zelaya was disposed in a military coup. Despite pleas from Zelaya—who remains holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa—for Hondurans to boycott the election, turnout was heavy. Local election officials estimated that roughly 60 percent of registered voters showed up at the polls. Initial returns indicate that the conservative Porfirio Lobo beat his main competitor, the Liberal Party's Elvin Santos, by a wide margin. [DC]

Newly Released UK Documents Shed Light on Iraq War Planning
November 23, 2009—London, United Kingdom: According to Britain's Sunday Telegraph, recently leaked UK government documents—including interview transcripts from high-level defense meetings—reveal that plans for the 2003 invasion of Iraq were being drawn up as early as February 2002, more than 12 months prior to the start of the conflict. The disclosure flies in the face of statements made by Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2002, when he insisted that his government had not conducted any war planning. The newly released material will likely be used as evidence in a nationwide inquiry examining Britain’s use of prewar intelligence. [DC]

Israel Launches New Air Strikes in Gaza
November 23, 2009—Gaza Strip: Over the weekend, the Israeli Air Force bombed what it described as two weapons-making facilities, as well as a tunnel allegedly used for moving materials in and out of the coastal territory. The Israeli government said it carried out the bombings to retaliate against Palestinians militants who had earlier shot rockets into southern Israel. The Israeli Air Force strikes injured seven. Shortly afterward, Hamas declared that it would temporarily halt firing rockets into Israel. The hostilities come less than a year after a major war in Gaza that resulted in 13 Israeli deaths and 1,400 Palestinian deaths. [DC]

EU Chooses New Leadership
November 19, 2009—Brussels, Belgium: The heads of Europe’s governments met for an extraordinary summit today in Brussels, where they settled on who will fill the EU offices of president and foreign minister before the Lisbon Treaty goes into effect December 1. Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy will assume the EU presidency and the European Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton from the United Kingdom will assume the EU foreign minister post. A failure to settle the issue before the treaty enters force would be an embarrassment for the European Union, although it would not be the first time the bloc has had to postpone institutional decision-making. [DC]

UN: Fight Global Warming with Condoms
November 18, 2009—London, United Kingdom: The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) recommended today that the effort to contain climate change could be augmented if condoms were more widely distributed across the world. With the planet's population expected to soar from its current 6.7 billion to more than 9 billion by mid-century, overpopulation is poised to emerge as a greater public health problem than it already is in many parts of the world, the UNFPA says. The agency contends that condoms—more than any other public health measure—have the ability to slow population growth rates, and as a result could reduce future demands on energy infrastructure that generate greenhouse gases. [DC]

Karzai Pledges to Address Government Corruption in Second Term
November 19, 2009—Kabul, Afghanistan: President Hamid Karzai was sworn in for his second five-year term in office today, after a highly controversial August election that was marred by widespread fraud allegations. Karzai says that to restore public faith in the Afghan government, one of his main goals during his second term will be to tackle political corruption within the ranks of his administration and elsewhere. Earlier this week, news broke that the country's interior ministers, Muhammad Ibrahim Adel, took at a bribe totaling between $20-30 million to ensure that a Chinese firm received a lucrative cooper mining contract worth $3 billion. [DC]

Obama Begins Inaugural Trip to Asia
November 16, 2009—Shanghai, China: Over the weekend, President Obama visited Japan, Singapore and China on the first part of his week-long tour of Asia. Hailing a new era of U.S.-Asia ties, the president spoke optimistically about the potential for greater economic and political engagement between the two areas as the world tries to pull itself out of the economic downturn. In Japan, Obama also took the opportunity to issue a stern warning to North Korea, which remains engaged in a tense standoff with the U.S. and other Asian nations over its nuclear weapons program. Obama insisted that the U.S. and its Asian allies "will not be cowed" by threats issued by Kim Jong-il's regime. [DC]

Palestinian-Jordan Women's Friendly Draws World's Attention
November 16, 2009—Al Ram, West Bank: Late last week, this town just outside East Jerusalem played host to a remarkable event—the first international match ever played by the Palestinian women's football team. The match pitted the Palestinians against Jordan, and drew an extraordinarily curious crowd of 16,000. (Across much of the Middle East, football is viewed as the domain of men, and women's clubs are a rarity.) The day won't be remembered for the game's score—a relatively bland 2-2 draw—but for bringing down a small but long-standing gender barrier in the West Bank. [DC]

Attack Raises Tensions between Iran and Pakistan
November 12, 2009—Peshawar, Pakistan: Militants killed a Pakistani employee at Iran's consulate earlier today in this violence-prone city in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. The murder of Abul Hasan Jaffri underscored the strained relationship between Iran and Pakistan following an October suicide bombing in Iran, an attack which Tehran believes Pakistan played a role in organizing. Today's killing of Jaffri also comes amid heightened tensions in the Peshawar region, with the Pakistani military conducting an ongoing offensive against Islamic extremists in the nearby South Waziristan province. [DC]

Brazil Faces Tough Questions in Wake of Massive Blackout
November 11, 2009—Sao Paolo, Brazil: A huge blackout that began Tuesday evening knocked out power to an estimated 60 million residents across southern Brazil. The outage lasted several hours, and affected major Brazilian urban centers including Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, as well as cities in towns in neighboring Paraguay. While Brazilian President Lula da Silva defended the integrity of his country's electric grid in the wake of the incident, the blackout raised troubling questions about the state of Brazil's infrastructure ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. [DC]

American Hikers Accused of Espionage

November 9, 2009—Tehran, Iran: Three American hikers detained along the Iranian border in late July were informally accused of espionage today, raising the likelihood that they will face a trial. The announcement came from one of Tehran's top prosecutors and quickly drew condemnation from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She said there is no evidence to support the allegations and added that the U.S. government would keep pressure on Iran to release the detained Americans. However, since the U.S. has no diplomatic presence in the country, Clinton said the U.S. would have to rely on the Swiss government to act as an intermediary. [DC]

Death Toll Rises in El Salvador

November 9, 2009—Verapaz, El Salvador: The death toll in El Salvador continues to rise after days of heavy rainfall sparked devastating flooding and landslides throughout the country. Authorities announced that 124 are already confirmed dead, and added that they expect that figure to increase over the coming days as search-and-rescue efforts continue. Work crews have fanned out around the Central American country to repair damaged roadways and restore electricity and water service to the hardest-hit areas. The storm system damaged more than 7,000 homes nationwide. [DC]

Geologists: Ethiopia to Get a New Coastline
November 4, 2009—Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: It may literally take another million years, but an international team of geologists reported this week that a vast, low-lying swath of Ethiopia will eventually become an arm of the Red Sea. Researchers made the announcement after spending four years studying a 35-mile crack that emerged in an Ethiopian desert almost overnight in 2005. They say the rift—up to 20 feet wide in some places—has been expanding in the same manner as a rift on the sea floor would. [DC]

African Boycott Sparks New Round of Global Warming Talks
November 4, 2009—Barcelona, Spain: About 50 African delegates walked out of a UN climate meeting in Spain earlier this week to protest the lack of discussion about rich nations' atmospheric pollution. The boycott received backing from about 70 other developing nations, and dominated media coverage of the event. The walkout ended Tuesday after reps from industrialized nations pledged to dedicate the rest of the week's meetings to discussing emissions cuts in the developed world. The delegates from Africa—a continent the UN recently predicted will be hit hardest by global warming in the coming century—want rich nations to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent over the next 10 years. [DC]

Hillary in the Holy Land
November 1, 2009—Jerusalem, Israel: As part of a whirlwind diplomacy tour that has seen stops in Pakistan and Morocco, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Israel over the weekend to try to restart foundering peace talks. She may have inadvertently added more fuel to the fire, however. During her visit, Clinton claimed that Israel had made an "unprecedented" offer to halt some settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank—as a goodwill gesture to get both sides back to the negotiating table. But Palestinian leaders immediately accused Clinton of undermining the peace process, noting that it has long been the Palestinian negotiating position that all settlement construction be frozen before talks resume. As recently as this summer, this was the Obama administration's position as well, until it failed to win meaningful Israeli concessions on the matter. [DC]

Afghan Presidential Contender Drops Out of Race
November 2, 2009—Kabul, Afghanistan: Former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah dropped out of the country's presidential race over the weekend, citing political corruption within Afghanistan's main election oversight body. This means that the highly anticipated run-off election between Abdullah and incumbent Hamid Karzai, originally scheduled for November 7th has now been cancelled and Karzai will serve another five year term. In response to the developments in Afghanistan, the White House announced its intentions to work with Karzai—even though the embattled leader has been the target of much of Obama’s administration criticism during the past year. [DC]

Russian War Games Outrage Poland
November 2, 2009—Warsaw, Poland: New documents obtained by the Polish media suggest that the Russian army conducted a simulated invasion of the country earlier this year during military exercises. According to Wprost, a leading Polish news outlet, the war games involved some 13,000 soldiers from Russia and Belarus and even simulated the use of nuclear weapons. Though Russia has apparently described the exercises as purely "defensive," leaders in Poland have accused Russia of behaving recklessly and trying to resurrect old imperialistic ambitions. [DC]

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