US Senate votes for Russian nuclear arms treaty
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 December 2010 23.29 GMT
The US Senate today voted overwhelmingly in favour of a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals.
The treaty has been Barack Obama's main foreign policy achievement but he had been struggling against Republican opposition in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority was needed for ratification.
US intelligence chief unaware of UK terror arrests
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
The Guardian, Thursday 23 December 2010
The head of US intelligence was exposed on national television yesterday as being unaware of the arrests in Britain of suspects in an alleged terrorist plot.
Later, the White House admitted that Clapper had not known about the developments in the UK.
John Brennan, the White House adviser on homeland security and security, said; "Should he have been briefed by his staff on those arrests? Yes."
African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
New York Times
Published: December 21, 2010
SOUMOUNI, Mali — The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave.
"They told us this would be the last rainy season for us to cultivate our fields; after that, they will level all the houses and take the land," said Mama Keita, 73, the leader of this village veiled behind dense, thorny scrubland. "We were told that Qaddafi owns this land."
Multiplying Drivers Run Over Beijing Traffic Plan
By MICHAEL WINES
New York Times
Published: December 22, 2010
BEIJING — Here is the plan unwrapped last week by Beijing’s city fathers to tackle the city’s suffocating traffic:
280,000 new parking spaces; 1,000 share-a-bike stations; 348 miles of new subway track; 125 miles of new downtown streets; 23 miles of tunnels; 9 new transportation hubs; 3 congestion zones; and 1 cure-all, "the use of modern technology."
For in the latest match between Beijing’s build-baby-build bureaucrats and its Gordian knot of traffic, more than a few folks are betting on the knot.
North Korea response muted to South's planned drills
By Yoo Choonsik and Sylvia Westall
Reuters
SEOUL | Wed Dec 22, 2010 9:51pm EST
criticized major land and sea military exercises to be staged by the South on Thursday, but stopped short of threatening a retaliatory strike as tension remained high on the divided peninsula.
UK flood defence cuts leave 5m vulnerable homes 'at risk'
Damian Carrington
The Guardian, Wednesday 22 December 2010
The government's cuts to the UK's flood defence budgets risk leaving the country's 5m at-risk homes less protected and the poorest communities losing out to richer areas, according to a critical report by MPs.
"Urgent action is needed to ensure that our communities are adequately and effectively protected from flooding," said Anne McIntosh, a Conservative MP and chair of the Environment, Food and Rural affairs select committee.
The increased risk of flooding, such as the floods that swamped homes in Cornwall last month, is due to climate change. |
|