As Obama Visits, Some Saudis Hope For Change
By Kelly McEvers
June 2, 2009
President Obama visits Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to meet with King Abdullah before heading to Egypt to deliver a long-awaited speech to the Muslim world.
The Saudi leader is expected to press Obama to take action on Middle East peace, but Obama is less likely to press the Saudi monarch on what many Saudis and Americans see as the slow pace of political and social reform inside the kingdom.
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Since taking the throne in 2005, King Abdullah has made big promises to reform Saudi Arabia. He says he wants women to vote, work and drive. He is spending billions of dollars to revamp schools and courts, both dominated by the country's conservative religious establishment.
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"I think the problem is the management," Bahli says. "Management is old people, very old people, very typical people," he says.
Bahli is referring to an entrenched and aging bureaucracy, and also to the clergy, which senses it is losing power and is fighting back. Religious figures recently have staged protests at events such as book fairs that they regard as too secular. |
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Israelis growing increasingly anxious about Obama policies
By Cliff Churgin
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
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Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest daily newspaper, carried a front-page story Tuesday bluntly titled: "The American Threat."
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The building apprehension comes as Obama is preparing to make a direct appeal to the Islamic world in Cairo on Thursday that's widely seen as a chance for the U.S. to launch a new, more cooperative era with Arab nations in the Middle East.
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Under the 6-year-old Road Map for Middle East Peace, drafted by the Bush administration, Israel is supposed to stop all settlement construction in the West Bank, including development in major settlements that Israel expects to retain in any peace deal.
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The Bush administration never seriously challenged Israel on this point. Obama, however, has stated plainly that Israel must honor its commitment to stop all settlement construction. Period. |
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French wine body says exports to fall 20% in 2009
By AFP
June 2, 2009
French wine and spirit exports are forecast to plunge by a fifth this year, a leading wine sellers' body said on Tuesday.
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He spoke on the sidelines of a meeting where an agreement with the government to boost wine makers' access to credit was signed.
The agreement allows wine makers to use their stocks of wine as collateral for loans . . . |
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U.S. embassies may invite Iranians to July 4 parties
By Eric Beech
Tue Jun 2, 2009 2:52pm EDT
U.S. embassies are allowed to invite Iranian officials to their July Fourth celebrations for the first time in 30 years in a sign of Washington's effort to reach out to Tehran, the State Department said on Tuesday.
However, the United States has not removed its blanket ban on its diplomats having substantive conversations with Iranian officials without prior authorization, it added, suggesting any such contacts will be limited to small talk for now. |
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Burn armed robbers, says Guinea crime chief
By Saliou Samb
Tue Jun 2, 2009 1:37pm EDT
Guinean citizens should burn any armed robbers they catch to avoid filling the country's prisons, the military government's anti-crime chief said Tuesday.
Lawlessness in the capital city Conakry has risen in recent months, with soldiers accused of being among the main culprits of robberies and rapes.
"I'm asking you to burn all armed bandits who are caught red-handed committing an armed robbery," said Captain Moussa Tiegboro Camara, appointed by the military junta to oversee the fight against drugs and serious crime. |
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EU announces health, water aid for Zimbabwe
By (AFP)
June 2, 2009
The European Commission said Tuesday it has allocated eight million euros (11.3 million dollars) in aid to help Zimbabweans without proper health services and water supplies.
The funds will be used to provide medicines and medical supplies, water treatment equipment and spare parts to upgrade water treatment plants and wells, the European Union's executive branch said in a statement. |
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Iraq bars Kurd party from polls for alleged rebel links
By (AFP)
June 2, 2009
A party said to be close to Kurdish rebels in Turkey has been barred from contesting next month's elections in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, the election commission and the party said on Tuesday.
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The list is dominated by the al-Hal party, seen as close to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, triggering a conflict that has claimed some 44,000 lives.
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The PKK is viewed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. |
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North Korea seen talking after securing succession: U.S.
By Paul Eckert
Tue Jun 2, 2009 11:55am EDT
North Korea will probably ease tensions it triggered with nuclear and missile tests now that it has moved to anoint leader Kim Jong-il's third son as his successor, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.
"My guess is that the North Koreans are likely to come back to the bargaining table, especially now that it appears that the succession has been secured," said the Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. |
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Syrian gays edge gingerly out of the closet
By Roueida Mabardi
June 2, 2009
To come out as a homosexual in a vibrantly macho Arab nation cannot be the easiest of lifestyle choices. In Syria, where being gay is often regarded as sickness or perversity, changes may be afoot.
Homosexuals there are beginning to step out of the shadows after a group of them joined together to launch an appeal on the Internet for tolerance.
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Most of those behind the bold move are born into the urban middle-class, "the driving force behind homosexual emancipation," adds the young reporter, speaking to AFP on condition that he not be identified. |
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Al-Qaeda tells Muslims: shun Obama
By (Al Jazeera and agencies)
Wednesday, June 03, 2009 03:59 Mecca time, 00:59 GMT
Al-Qaeda's deputy leader has urged Muslims not to listen to Barack Obama as the US president heads to the Middle East to make a speech to the Muslim world.
Calling Obama a "criminal", Ayman al-Zawahiri told Muslims not to heed the "elegant words" of the US leader whose speech in Cairo on Thursday is aimed at repairing ties with the Islamic world damaged by his predecessor's "war on terror" policies.
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The recording could not be verified. |
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Long war against Pakistan Taleban
By Syed Shoaib Hasan
23:16 GMT, Tuesday, 2 June 2009 00:16 UK
Pakistan's security forces appear to have achieved their main objective in Swat with the capture of its administrative seat of Mingora.
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Some fighting is still going on in the mountainous rural areas - especially the Peochar valley, the militants' main stronghold.
Everyone on the list of most wanted militants - from Osama Bin Laden onwards - is said to be hiding in that area. |
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Secular Jews may be minority in Israeli schools by 2030
By Ofri Ilani
06:24 03/06/2009
Secular Jews are expected to become a minority in Israeli schools and among the draft-age population within 20 years, according to a recent study published in the current issue of U.S. magazine Foreign Policy.
The study, which is based on figures from Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, predicts that by 2030 Arabs and ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews together will compose close to 60 percent of Israel's elementary school population and about 40 percent of eligible voters.
"The Changing Face of Israel" was written by Richard Cincotta, a consulting demographer to the U.S. government's National Intelligence Council, and Eric Kaufmann of the University of London. They use demographic analysis to explain the trends evidenced in the last Israeli election, including the growing strength of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, and attribute its success to secular Israelis' fears about the continuing erosion of the country's Zionist majority. |
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Pakistan frees head of militant group accused of Mumbai attack
By Saeed Shah
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
A Pakistani court on Tuesday freed the leader of an Islamic militant group that's been blamed for the devastating terrorist assault last year on Mumbai, India, a move that's likely to damage the prospects of peace between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
The court decided to release Hafiz Saeed, the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, from the house arrest that he'd been under since the attack in November 2008. Tensions between India and Pakistan have hampered the fight against Taliban extremists in western Pakistan and Afghanistan while Islamabad focused instead on its eastern border with India. |
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Japanese voters want tough climate goals: survey
By (Reuters)
Tue Jun 2, 2009 6:45am EDT
Japanese voters favor the deepest cuts in greenhouse gases under consideration by Prime Minister Taro Aso as part of a new U.N. climate pact, according to opinion poll results on Tuesday.
The survey indicated that 63 percent of Japanese of voting age favored a cut in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 in a U.N. pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, it said. |
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Israel's Barak urges U.S. to rethink settlement stand
By Dan Williams
Tue Jun 2, 2009 5:10pm EDT
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak lobbied the United States on Tuesday to rethink its demand to curb Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a dispute that has strained ties as the allies try to close ranks against Iran.
A U.S.-sponsored 2003 peace "road map" requires that Israel stop expanding the settlements, whose presence on occupied land where Palestinians seek a state was deemed illegal by the World Court.
Israel, which says previous U.S. President George W. Bush tacitly agreed that new settler homes could go up to match population growth, has been taken aback by the Obama administration's repeated public calls for a halt. |
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Mexico drug arrests leave prisons crowded, violent
By Miguel Angel Gutierrez
Tue Jun 2, 2009 4:12pm EDT
The rounding up of thousands of suspects in Mexico's drug war has left the already unruly prison system overwhelmed with jailbreaks and struggling to contain deadly riots between inmates from rival gangs.
Dozens of violent clashes have rocked jails this year and a stream of inmates have escaped. Last month drug hitmen dressed as police screeched up to a northern Mexico prison in a convoy of vans and freed 53 prisoners who were seen on security cameras pouring into the street.
The chaos is posing another security risk for President Felipe Calderon, who has made crushing drug violence the centerpiece of his presidency. |
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Death toll at South African gold mine rises to 61
By James Macharia
Tue Jun 2, 2009 1:43pm EDT
The death toll from a fire at an abandoned South African gold mine rose to at least 61 on Tuesday, making it the country's worst such disaster in recent memory at an illicit mine.
The fire has raged for days at the mine, owned by Harmony Gold Mining Co., in the central Free State province whose many disused mines hold enough deposits to attract illegal mining syndicates.
A further 25 bodies were recovered Tuesday. |
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