A brief world news roundup for 7 November 2008.

United States & the Americas

• Treasury Dept – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced that it is revoking the “U-turn” license for Iran, further restricting Iran’s access to the U.S. financial system. Prior to today’s action, U.S. financial institutions were authorized to process certain funds transfers for the direct or indirect benefit of Iranian banks, other persons in Iran or the Government of Iran, provided such payments were initiated offshore by a non-Iranian, non-U.S. financial institution and only passed through the U.S. financial system en route to another offshore, non-Iranian, non-U.S. financial institution.
• CNN – The U.S. government told CNN it suspended military aid within the last week to three Colombian army units implicated in the extrajudicial killings of at least 11 innocent civilians. The official did not state how much aid was involved, and there was no immediate reaction from the Colombian government.
• Murad Al-shishani – Is al-Qaeda Seeking Allies in Latin America?
• IRIB – IRI’s Ambassador to Brasilia Mohsen Shaterzadeh said Iran intends to increase its commercial and trade exchange with Brazil from 2 to 10 billion dollars annually. Referring to the recent visit of Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim to Iran, Shaterzadeh said, “The two countries have also decided to take common stances in the international meetings.”
• Reuters – President Evo Morales, who has banned U.S. anti-drug agents from working in Bolivia, said on Thursday his country can fight cocaine trafficking on its own. Morales, a leftist who used to be a coca farmer, ordered the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, to stop its work in Bolivia on Saturday after accusing the agency of spying and conspiring to overthrow him.
• CBS – The nearly $5 billion U.S. aid package known as Plan Colombia has failed to meet its goal of halving illegal narcotics production in this Andean nation, says a U.S. congressional report.
• RIA Novosti – Russian aluminum giant RusAl plans to develop a project to produce aluminum in Venezuela, a Russian deputy prime minister said on Thursday. “RusAl is set to develop a project for the production of bauxites and aluminum with a Venezuelan company,” Igor Sechin said at the opening of a bilateral intergovernmental commission meeting.
• Global Voices – The Kaibiles are soldiers in the Guatemalan Army that undergo a specialized, yet controversial training at a school in the northern part of the country, nicknamed “Hell”. Many Guatemalans reject the abusive training that the Kabiles receive, which some say, closely resembles self-inflicted torture. It is often difficult to fathom why such methods are necessary, as described by blogger Statchka [es] when he details “Black Week of a Kaibil”. He explains that they are even forced to drink animals blood to survive.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Moscow Times – A female suicide bomber blew herself up near a busy downtown market in North Ossetia’s capital, Vladikavkaz, on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 40 others, authorities said.
• Lt Col Erik Rundquist -  A large joint air defense drill was completed on 23 October, when Russian, Kazakh, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Tajik, and Uzbek militaries purportedly tested and exercised integrated air defense network operations. There are plans for reducing the intermediate level of command as the current four-tiered status of military district-army-division-regiment is scheduled to change to a three-tiered. These changes all are taking place in the midst of proposals for dramatic changes in Russian military manpower.
• Kommersant – The Russian Federation and the European Union inked in Brussels an agreement on Russia’s participation in the EU military mission in Chad and the Central African Republic (EUFOR Tchad/CAR), the RF Foreign Ministry announced.
• RIA Novosti – Russia has bought out Oman’s share in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, and the deal is expected to be closed within the next two weeks, the head of the Transneft pipeline operator said Thursday. Russia’s share is now 31% Russian business daily Kommersant said on Wednesday.
• CRN – The plans of the National Television and Radio Board (NTRB) of Azerbaijan to stop broadcasting of foreign radio stations in national frequencies are another evidence of the intention of country leaders to deprive their population of alternative information sources, human rights activists assert.

Multiple Apache attack helicopters from the Combat Aviation Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division - Baghdad, land on the Camp Taji Airfield, Nov. 3 (photo by Sgt. Jason Dangel)

Middle East

• Daily Star – The United States has agreed to several changes proposed by Baghdad to a security deal meant to lead to a pullout of US troops by late 2011, and sees the process as complete, a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday. “We have responded very positively to many of their concerns with respect to their proposed amendments.
• Washington Post – Gen. David H. Petraeus has decided to reduce the number of U.S. combat brigades in Iraq from 15 to 14 about six weeks earlier than planned, as a result of dramatically lower violence there, Pentagon officials said.
• AFPS – Coalition forces killed one enemy fighter and detained 17 terrorism suspects in operations throughout Iraq yesterday and today, military officials reported. Coalition forces in Mosul conducted multiple operations in the city today, capturing nine individuals with alleged ties to al-Qaida’s senior leader, weapons and communications networks.
• Standart – The Bulgarian soldiers serving in Iraq will be home by Christmas. The Bulgarian Government is ready to reduce or to fully withdraw the Bulgarian contingent from Baghdad, Plamen Ranchev, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee, told the Bulgarian National Radio.
• SANA – Syrian TV tonight broadcast the confessions of the perpetrators of the terrorist act that took place at Kazzaz area on 27th of last September, claiming the lives of 17 people and injured 65 others. The confessions of the terrorists indicated that the suicide bomber who blew up himself along with the car bomb was a Saudi national who belonged to Fatah al-Islam . They also indicated that one of Fatah al-Islam financial resources is the Future Movement , Tayyar alMoustakbal
• Haaretz – The Israel Defense Forces Northern Command concluded a large-scale exercise Thursday which simulated a double-front conflagration with Syria and Lebanon. The drill, codenamed “Shiluv Zro’ot III” (Crossing Arms III), was the second largest of its kind since the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Among this week’s exercises was a strategic-level simulation involving all IDF commands.
• NOW Lebanon – Hezbollah official Sheikh Naim Qassem said that his party would not give up its arms unless the state built an equivalent force. At a political meeting in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Qassem said that “we believe in  a strong resistance and we should work on strengthening it and we also believe in the Lebanese army  and the necessity to provide it with adequate arms to resist Israel.”
• News Yemen – A group of tribes in Mareb have by force closed a number of oil wells in province, local sources in Mareb said. The sources said that armed tribes locked Thursday 10 wells in Raidan block and three wells in Monkem block.

Iran

• NCRI – According to reports obtained from sources within the regime, meetings have been conducted in the presence of Khamenei and other senior officials of the regime, in which the agenda, plans, and budget for expanding the regime’s military bases have been approved and the task of establishing new bases has been delegated to the military. The creation of a new naval base east of the Strait of Hormuz, on the port of Jask, has been one of the initiatives in this regard. The regime seeks to utilize the strategic status of this port for easier access to warm waters and proximity to the Indian Ocean, in order to implement its aims.
• IRNA – A member of Majlis Presiding Board Hamid-Reza Haji-Babaei said Thursday that the era of Zionists is ending. “The election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States indicates that Zionists are no longer able to carry out their own policies aimed at determining the fate of the world,” the MP told IRNA.
• Fars News – Iran Blasts UAE for Deterring Progress over Gas Deal; The managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company blamed Crescent Petroleum in the United Arab Emirates for thwarting progress on export deals.
• Payvand – Photos: Safavid Era Castle in Birjand, Iran

South Asia

• AFP – Seven Afghan villagers were killed in coalition air strikes, police said Thursday, a day after claims that scores of civilians died elsewhere in operations also involving foreign forces. Separately, authorities reported that some 40 militants were killed in clashes across Afghanistan.
• USASOC – Afghan National Security Forces, assisted by Coalition forces, detained two insurgents and killed one in Zer-e-koh Valley, Shindand district, Herat province Nov. 4
• USASOC – Afghan National Security Forces and Coalition forces killed a group of insurgents during an extended patrol in Shah Wali Kot district, Kandahar province Nov. 3-5
• USASOC – National Security Forces and Coalition forces killed eight insurgents during a combat patrol in Khas Oruzgan district, Oruzgan province Nov. 4.
• Times Online – The first Nepalese Gurkha soldier to be killed in Afghanistan has been named as Yubraj Rai, 28, of the 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles. He died on Tuesday in Musa Qala, southern Afghanistan, when a joint patrol with the Afghan National Security Forces was attacked.
• Daily Times – US missile strikes in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas in recent months have killed three of the top 20 Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the area, US Central Command chief Gen David Petraeus told The Associated Press in an interview on Thursday. He did not identify the leaders he said had died in the US strikes.
• Daily Times – Twenty-two tribesmen were killed and 45 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a Salarzai jirga in Bajaur Agency on Thursday. The blast targeted a lashkar (volunteer militia) in Batmalani, about 40 kilometres northeast of agency headquarters Khar.
• Geo – Three Frontier Corps personnel were killed and 13 others, including 10 FC men, injured when a suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden vehicle near the Mingora Police Lines Thursday.
• The News – The authorities on Thursday released a close aide of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud in exchange for 10 security personnel, who were kidnapped in July.
• Asia Times – India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the head of its leading political party, have made for a remarkable match – a Sikh economist and an Italian-born Roman Catholic housewife who together govern the world’s largest and most complex democracy. The unlikely couple now faces its sternest test.
• Reuters – Indian troops in Kashmir’s main city sealed off residential areas with razor wire and barricades, imposing what amounted to an undeclared curfew to thwart a separatist rally on Thursday, police and witnesses said.
• Economist – India’s financial system remains inefficient India’s financial system is dominated by state-owned commercial banks that allocate capital inefficiently. Part of this inefficiency stems from regulations that require banks to provide funding to “priority” sectors.
• ISN – India and Pakistan lock horns over Himalayan water resources as the two agrarian nations are hit hard by food and energy shortages, Naveed Ahmad reports for ISN Security Watch.

Far East & Pacific

• Jakarta Post – Officials from Serang Prosecutor’s Office visited the house of convicted terrorist Imam Samudra in Serang, Banten, on Thursday and informed his family members of his imminent execution.
• EastSouthWestNorth – Extreme Nationalists Versus Nihilists In China; In recent years, we have grown accustomed to the standard model of Internet debates, with the loudest voices come from two opposite extremes.
• FEER – Partners in Oppression; Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win visited North Korea on Oct. 27 to hold the first high-level meeting since diplomatic relations were severed 25 years ago. The real concern should be for the citizens of Burma and North Korea, who continue to suffer under the repressive regimes.
• VietNamNet – The 4th CLMV Summit of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) took place in Hanoi on Nov. 6 under the chairmanship of the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
• The Courier-Mail – New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark may be swept from nine years of power tomorrow in a national election as voters look to a rich former investment banker to lift the country out of recession.

Europe

• ynet – French president, foreign minister meet with Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik before she delivered keynote speech before nearly a thousand European MPs at ‘unprecedented’ Paris conference in support of Israel.
• AKI – Swiss lawyer Dick Marty is appearing as a witness at the controversial trial of five Italian intelligence agents and 26 Americans, most of them CIA agents, in the northern city of Milan. The defendants are charged with abducting an Egyptian-born Muslim cleric and terrorism suspect there in 2003. Marty last year wrote a report by Europe’s top human rights body The Council of Europe on the CIA’s alleged detentions and illegal flight transfers of terrorism suspects, known as ‘extraordinary renditions’.
• Khaleej Times – Russia and Italy were to sign energy deals on Thursday during a one-day visit to Moscow by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a Kremlin official said. “There are 30 documents ready for signing,” including deals between Italian companies and the government on one side and top Russian oil, electricity and nuclear energy companies on the other, said Kremlin spokesman Alexei Pavlov.
• RTTNews – Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who is on an official visit to Slovenia, pledged Thursday that his country would ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Poland and Britain are the two members of the 27-nation European Union not to have ratified the Lisbon Treaty, which is designed to improve the bloc’s decision- making process.
• Irish Times – Gardai, the Naval Service and customs have seized a huge quantity of cocaine with an estimated street value of €500 million from a yacht off the southwest coast of Ireland. Three men aged between 44 and 52 have been arrested.

Africa

• Garowe – Insurgents in Somalia attacked government and allied foreign forces on Thursday, a day after a ceasefire officially went into effect, Radio Garowe reported. The Islamist al Shabaab group claimed responsibility for shelling Somali and Ethiopian army posts and engaging in street battles with soldiers, according to a spokesman for guerrilla group.
• BBC – Rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have seized control of another town, forcing government forces and residents to flee, the UN has said. UN spokesman Lt-Col Jean Paul Dietrich said Gen Laurent Nkunda’s troops had taken Nyanzale in North Kivu province, breaking the ceasefire he had declared.
• IRIN – Aid workers have been evacuated after attacks by the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the north-eastern territory of Dungu, near the Sudan border, which have caused thousands of civilians to flee since September.
• Xinhua – More than 10,000 refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have fled into neighboring Uganda since the latest wave of clashes began late last month between the government army and Tutsi rebels, the UN humanitarian agency has said.
• AFP – Armed Islamists have assassinated the mayor of a northern Algerian town after kidnapping him, the interior ministry said in a statement Thursday.
• Xinhua – Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo on Thursday afternoon began an official visit to Gabon on the second leg of his five-nation Africa tour. The two sides are also expected to sign a series of economic and trade agreements.
• Independent – What a difference a week has made for South African MP Nhlanhla Nene: last week a YouTube figure of fun after his chair collapsed under him in a live television interview, yesterday promoted to Deputy Finance Minister.

Sailors assigned to the colors detail lower the Navy Jack on the bow of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan during a scheduled port visit to Singapore. (photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Joseph Buliavac)

The Global War

• Paul Rogers – In light of Barack Obama’s victory in the United States presidential election, the al-Qaida movement once more solicits advice from the renowned management consultancy. A ninth report from the South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics to the al-Qaida Strategic Planning Cell (SPC) on the progress of the campaign.
• Bennet Sacolick – On a recent Friday I had the opportunity to address some of the finest Soldiers in the United States Army. These young men were graduating from the Special Forces Qualification Force – not an easy feat. Having spent 27 years in the special operations arena, I understood their excitement and how proud they felt during the ceremony; I had sat in a similar chair myself. However, it was important to me that their families understand exactly what their loved ones signed on for. And, in further thinking, it’s also important to me that the citizens of this country know the dedication and professionalism that is embodied in the men of Special Forces. It is to that end, that I share my graduation remarks with you.
• Alex Evans, Global Dashboard – Next week sees the publication of the International Energy Agency’s latest flagship World Energy Outlook, which has been heavily leaked to the Financial Times.  The report makes the same point that I’ve been arguing since prices started to slide from their peak of $147 over the summer (to around $60 today): oil prices are going to go back up. A lot.

Sights & Sounds

DW – European Commission publishes EU progress report; The report expressed concern about political instability in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 13 years after the war in Bosnia deep ethnic divisions still exist and the EU remains concerned about Bosnia’s long-term future.

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BBC From Our Own Correspondent – Peter Greste considers the confusing and contradictory nature of life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Remembrance Day approaches, Dan Payne visits Belgium to see how the country remembers World War I and learns what it means to people who live there. In the Chadian capital N’Djamena, Celeste Hicks reflects on the high security and tension which surrounds the city. Mick Webb learns about a controversial decision to reintroduce bears to the Ariege department of the Pyrenees

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Heritage Foundation – Golden Bones: An Extraordinary Journey From Hell in Cambodia

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Stratfor – As attention turns to the presidential transition in the United States, challenges are queuing up for Barack Obama’s attention. Today, a look at Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s State of the State address and the latest development in Mexico’s drug cartel wars.

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