A brief world news roundup for 18 November 2009.

United States & the Americas

• NY Times – President Obama made a big effort Tuesday at presenting his first visit to China as a step forward in America’s evolving relationship with its fastest rising competitor. But what emerged after six hours of meetings, two dinners, and a stilted 30-minute presentation to the press in which Chinese President Hu Jintao would not allow questions, was a picture of a China more willing to say no to the United States.
• US Senate Cmte on Foreign Relations – Examining US Counterterrorism Priorities and Strategy Across Africa’s Sahel Region
• National Post – Counterterrorism officials are investigating a group of youths who allegedly left Canada for East Africa two weeks ago, amid concerns they may have gone to join the Somali militant group Al-Shabab.
• Press Trust – Aiming to give a major push to their ties, India and Canada today signed an energy pact and decided to ink a civil nuclear agreement and undertake a feasibility study for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).
• El Universal – China’s third-biggest steelmaker Wuhan Iron & Steel Group (Wisco) signed a long-term iron ore contract with Venezuela’s state-run company Corporación Venezolana de Guayana (CVG), announced on Tuesday the official Chinese newspaper China Daily.
• Xinhua – China and Brazil vowed to advance military relations to a new high as senior officials from both countries met here Tuesday.
• MercoPress – The Brazilian Federal Police announced that beginning December an unmanned “spy” aircraft will over-fly the shanty towns of Rio do Janeiro at a height of 7.000 metres, well out of range from the drug gangs and trades that last week shot down a police helicopter killing three men on board.
• Prensa Latina – Bolivia, China to Sign Satellite Agreement; An interministerial commission will travel to China next November 23 to discuss technical issues related to the first telecommunication satellite”s construction in that South American country, which will named Túpac Katari.
• COHA – A Grey Goldmine: Recent Developments in Lithium Extraction in Bolivia and Alternative Energy Projects
• Columbia Reports – The commander of a FARC column in the south of Colombia is held responsible for the killings of twelve people in the past three weeks. Authorities say the murders are to avenge the death of the commander’s boyfriend. The killings all occured in the south of the central-west Tolima department that has seen intense fighting for years and is considered a FARC stronghold because of its mountainous south.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• RIA Novosti – Russia is close to finishing the construction of Iran’s first nuclear power plant and is currently making final adjustments, Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said on Tuesday.
• Xinhua – Russian aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi announced Tuesday it would supply the newest Su-35S fighters to the Russian Defense Ministry from next year.
• Nosint – Russia’s plan to supply Lebanon with 10 MiG-29 fighter jets will enter its final phase soon, the Beirut-based Al-Markazia news agency reported
• RFERL – An antifascist campaigner has been shot dead in Moscow, investigators said, in what a fellow activist said may have been revenge for the arrests of ultranationalists earlier this month.
• UPI -  Construction of the first drilling rig for the Shtokman gas and condensate field in the Barents Sea is slated for the fourth quarter of 2010, Gazprom said.
• The National – Much, however, remains rotten in the North Caucasus, and in what some see as a tacit admission of the severe shortcomings Mr Putin’s strategy in the region, his successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, has decried the rampant violence and corruption there and pledged a renewed effort to bring tranquillity to the conflict-scarred region. In his annual state-of-the-nation speech last week, Mr Medvedev called the situation in the North Caucasus – home to other restive, primarily Muslim, republics such as Dagestan and Ingushetia – the “most serious domestic political problem” facing Russia today.
• EurasiaNet – Amid a diplomatic chill, Azerbaijan and Turkey opened a new round of talks November 16 on an energy export price. Recent agreements on gas supplies to Bulgaria, Iran and Russia suggest that Baku is exploring alternative export routes as a means to pressure Ankara into paying significantly more for Azerbaijani natural gas.
• SRI – Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources approved Canada-based Uranium One’s acquisition of a 50-percent interest in the Karatau uranium venture from Russia’s Atomredmetzoloto (ARMZ).
• Russia Today – Tajikistan and Russia: partnership for stability in Central Asia; Russia’s Central Asian neighbor shares many of Moscow’s same concerns, and this has helped to forge a dynamic partnership between the two countries.

Middle East

• Al Sumaria – Six people were killed and eight others were wounded in a car bomb explosion in Kirkuk. The explosion caused major damages to stores and buildings nearby while police forces cordoned off the region.
• ABC – Iraq’s Kurds threatened Tuesday to boycott national elections, days after the country’s Sunni vice president threatened to veto the newly passed election law needed to hold the January vote.
• Voices of Iraq – An Iraqi judge on Tuesday escaped an attempt on his life when gunmen attacked his car near Mosul, according to a local police chief.
• Haaretz – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Tuesday that Iran’s nuclear program posed a threat not just to Israel, but to the entire world, during a visit to a submarine that underscored Israel’s military might. “The threat that Iran poses is very grave for the state of Israel, for peace in the Middle East and the whole world,” Netanyahu said aboard a missile ship. “Without any doubt, we are the first target, but not the last.”
• Jerusalem Post – In the face of the growing ballistic missile threat against Israel, the Defense Ministry plans to significantly increase production of Arrow missile interceptors, capable of intercepting incoming Iranian and Syrian Shihab and Scud missiles, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday.
• Daily Star – Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said Hizbullah was attempting to implement its own agenda, adding that he refused to  visit Syria in the current period. “Israel objects to all issues in Lebanon as well as elsewhere, but Hizbullah is known to be an armed party with aims and objectives which the party is attempting to implement.”
• NOW Lebanon – A Hezbollah source denied on Tuesday media reports that Hezbollah elected new members to its Shura Council. The source also said that the party is still preparing to hold the council’s elections, but did not disclose any further information.
• MEMRI – Alarabiya.net reports, citing Iranian sources, on the tension prevailing recently between Tehran and Hizbullah, due to Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s criticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s shaky relations with Arab countries.
• ynet – The United Nations atomic watchdog said on Tuesday it was inspecting a nuclear research reactor in Damascus because it had doubts about Syria’s explanation as to how traces of uranium got there.
• Al Arabiya – Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz confirmed late Monday that all armed infiltrators have been driven of the Saudi territory by the country’s armed forces. He said that all residents who have been evacuated from their villages due to fighting are being taken care of with the government.
• Asharq Al Awsat – A Saudi military source confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the Huthi infiltrators are following a specific approach in their continuing attacks on the Saudi forces that have been deployed in the border region. The source revealed that the Huthi rebels lay low for the majority of the day before launching surprise attacks on [Saudi] military sites at night.
• Guardian – Turkey on Tuesday transferred five inmates to the prison island holding Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan so he can end his isolation. The Council of Europe had demanded that Turkey end Ocalan’s solitude, saying his mental state was deteriorating after years as the sole inmate of Imrali island, off Istanbul.
• Hurriyet – Turkey and Spain, two countries that suffer from terrorism, discussed ways to jointly fight against this fatal threat. According to Turkish diplomats, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu briefed his counterpart, Miguel Angel Moratinos, about his government’s ongoing Kurdish move and its plans to end the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, terrorism.
• TIME – Archaeologists in Egypt Dig up a Persian Puzzle; Twin Italian archaeologists say they have discovered the remains of an army once thought to have been mythical, deep in the sands of the Sahara

Iran

• RFERL – A senior Iranian military official has accused Saudi Arabia of killing Shi’ite Muslims in Yemen and denounced it as the onset of “Wahhabi state terrorism,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
• ISNA – Russians say technical problems have caused the delay in delivery of S300 defense systems to Iran, said Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi
• Xinhua – Iran’s oil minister said Tuesday that his country will add 14 million liters of gasoline to its daily output, the official IRNA news agency reported. Masoud Mirkazemi said the production of gasoline in Iran’s three petrochemical plants would decrease the amount of imported gasoline by 14 million liters per day, the report said.
• Fars – Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is slated to leave Tehran for Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, Tuesday night.
• Mehr -  Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said the “door is open” for India to rejoin the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline but indicated that Iran could not wait indefinitely and the structure of the project could change in the future
• Uskowi on Iran – Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence PSA video
• Washington Post – Iran’s judiciary is investigating the death of a conscript doctor who served in a now-closed detention facility, where the suspicious deaths of three anti-government protesters are currently under a parliamentary probe, the Khabar newspaper reported Tuesday.
• Reporters Without Borders – Journalists are continuing to be arrested five months after the start of the demonstrations against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection. Three more have been arrested in the past couple of weeks while those who defend the 34 detained journalists and bloggers are being subjected to increased intimidation
• Al Jazeera – The trial of a French lecturer who was arrested after Iran’s disputed presidential election in June has resumed after reports that she could be set free at the hearing. Reiss, who is bail and staying at the French embassy in Iran, is accused of taking part in a Western plot to destabilise the Iranian government

Marines from India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, walk with local elders during a patrol of the village of Kace Satar, Farah Province, Afghanistan, Nov. 11. (photo by Cpl. Zachary Nola)

South Asia

• Asia Times – Taliban counter-moves against United States coalition efforts to forge a supply route from Central Asia to northern Afghanistan have ended the relative calm in that part of Afghanistan and could drag Central Asian states into the conflict. As more foreign fighters from groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan join the ranks of the emerging “northern Taliban”, the issue is rapidly climbing up the coalition’s agenda.
• CSM – The Taliban had set a trap for the tiny company of Afghan soldiers here, its handful of US mentors and the American helicopters that they expected would rush in to help. Firing mortars to lure the Americans and Afghans out of their mud-straw base, the motorcycle-borne Taliban headed toward a nearby ravine. Dozens of insurgents with light machine guns, a recoilless rifle and four trucks bearing three anti-aircraft guns and a heavy machine gun were set up in a classic ambush from high ground
• Xinhua – Taliban militants fighting the Afghan government in the latest wave of violence have beheaded two civilians in the western Farah province, a local newspaper reported Tuesday. Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the beheading, saying they were punished for spying for foreign troops
• AFPS – Afghan and international forces worked together to kill or detain numerous enemy fighters and terrorism suspects in operations over the last two days, military officials reported. A combined Afghan and international security force killed several enemy militants, including a sought-after Taliban district commander, and detained several suspected militants in Afghanistan’s Wardak province early today.
• Daily Mail – British troops fighting in Afghanistan should buy off the Taliban with ‘bags of gold’, according to new Army guidelines. Cash can be ‘a substitute for force’, the new counter-insurgency field manual states.
• Independent – A Territorial Army soldier was shot dead two weeks after arriving in Afghanistan and telling friends that troops were “still waiting” for promised new body armour and helmets.
• Dawn – The head of the Taliban in Swat valley, Maulana Fazlullah, has said that he has escaped the army and is now in Afghanistan. Maulana Fazlullah told BBC Urdu that he had reached Afghanistan safely and will soon launch full-fledged punitive raids against the army in Swat.
• Daily Times – Security forces killed four terrorists in operations in Swat, as the ISPR on Monday said Operation Rah-e-Nijat was progressing well in South Waziristan. An ISPR statement said security forces were consolidating their positions on each of the three main axes in the agency.
• Geo – Pakistan Army has taken full control of Sararogha amid ongoing operation in Southern Waziristan killing a large number of Uzbek militants there Tuesday
• The News – Three persons were killed and over 30 others sustained injuries in yet another suicide car bombing, targeting Badaber police station near the city on the Kohat Road.
• Dawn – Taliban militants blew up a girls’ school in Khyber district on Tuesday, the third such attack in the region so far this month, officials said. An intelligence official in the area said Taliban attacked the government-run school overnight when no one was at the property.
• The News – Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said on Monday that in the wake of the ongoing war on terror, the defence spending was bound to be revised upward as compared with the envisaged budgetary allocation.
• UPI – Indian officials said they don’t plan to launch a satellite for Iran, a sensitive issue for Western countries already concerned about Iran’s missile program.
• The Hindu – Jammu and Kashmir secessionist leaders have held a second round of secret dialogue with Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, in an effort to push forward the stalled peace process in the State, highly-placed government sources told The Hindu.
• BBC – It is six months since the end of the conflict in Sri Lanka but Tamil Tiger rebels and their supporters are yet to recover from the dramatic military defeat by security forces earlier this year. The recent attempts by remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) abroad to revive the movement have not succeeded so far.

Far East & Pacific

• Reuters – Japan and the United States will hold the first meeting of a working group to tackle a row over a U.S. military base on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said, days after a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to revitalize ties. The row broke out after Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama promised ahead of his August election win to have the Futenma Marine base moved off the southern island of Okinawa, contradicting an agreement Washington reached with a previous government.
• Japan Times – Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada admitted it would be difficult to “completely scrap” the 2006 Japan-U.S. accord on reorganizing the American forces in Japan that includes the planned relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within Okinawa. He made the remarks after meeting strong resistance from local governments over his call to consider merging the Futenma flight operations, now in Ginowan, with the nearby U.S. Kadena air base instead of moving the base farther north to Nago, as per the bilateral accord.
• Yonhap – North Korea said it sent a military delegation to China on Tuesday, as U.S. President Barack Obama agreed with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing to step up cooperation in persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
• The Australian – The 56 asylum-seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking are due to end their three-week standoff with the Australian government this morning in a move that will help Kevin Rudd address tensions with Indonesia over the impasse
• Graeme Dobell – Here’s a question for Australia’s defence community. Hands up anyone who thinks Defence can deliver on the promise it made in the White Paper to find $20 billion in cost savings over 10 years.
• Bangkok Post – Six suspected insurgents were killed and two policemen wounded in an exchange of fire in Pattani’s Khok Pho district on Tuesday. The 30-minute clash took place after members of Santisuk Task Force, a combined military, police and civilian unit, surrounded three houses at Phru Chut village in tambon Khuan Nori where a number of suspected insurgents were reported to have assembled.

Europe

• BNET – It is being reported that the Royal Air Force (RAF) is creating a package of cuts and restructuring for the next defense budget in England. The idea is that if the service itself proposes these ahead of the preparation of the budget by the Ministry’s leadership they will get to pick and choose where they occur rather then having them dictated. It is assumed that no matter if their is a new Conservative or Labor government the cost of continuing operations in Afghanistan will eat into the support of existing forces as well as future investments.
• UK FCO – Building on the PM’s foreign policy speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, David Miliband delivered a speech at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly on our strategy in Afghanistan.
• RIA Novosti – NATO has been actively discussing the possibility of establishing a joint European army for a long time. The latest discussion was triggered after The Times published an interview with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on November 15, 2009.
• Spiegel – An explosive trial about to start in Munich involves a spy accused of betraying state secrets to his gay lover. It promises to expose the shadowy world of Germany’s foreign intelligence and may end up damaging the service
• The Local – Two leading Rwandan Hutu rebels were arrested in Germany on Tuesday on suspicion of crimes against humanity and recent war crimes in Congo, prosecutors in Karlsruhe said.
• AKI – Violent threats against politicians and journalists from a far-left group has placed the Italian government on high alert. The threats were made in a letter sent by the Nucleus for Territorial Action (NAT) to media outlets this week. “There are worrying signals,” said interior minister, Roberto Maroni, in the northern city of Milan on Tuesday. Maroni said he could not rule out a possible link between the organisation and radical Islamists
• BBC – A gang suspected of bringing more than 2,000 illegal immigrants into Europe has been targeted by police in a series of raids across Europe
• Kremlin – Dmitry Medvedev will visit Stockholm to take part in the Russia-EU summit on November 17-18, 2009

Africa

• VOA – The spokesman for Somalia’s militant al-Shabab group in Kismayo says members of the Ethiopia-based rebel group, Ogaden National Liberation Front, are fighting alongside one of the factions of al-Shabab’s former Islamist ally, Hizbul Islam, in the south of the country. The accusation runs counter to Ethiopia’s claim that the ONLF has ties to al-Shabab.
• Shabelle – Sheik Abdinasir Serar who claimed as the secretary of the Islamic organization of Hizbul Islam for the foreign affairs has Tuesday said that they gained victory over yesterday’s fighting in Lower Jubba region in southern Somalia.
• Sudan Tribune – A minister in the Government of Southern Sudan narrowly escaped with gunshot wound on Sunday as his convoy was ambushed by unknown gunmen. Four were killed and five others wounded, two in critical condition, as the vehicle carrying minister Dr. Samson Kwaje of Agriculture and Forestry was riddled with more than twenty bullets by assailants.
• Al Jazeera – A Virgin Islands-owned chemical tanker carrying 28 North Korean crew members has been hijacked by Somali pirates off the Seychelles, the multinational naval force operating in the area has said.
• ISN – Significant military agreements undertaken by Morocco, Algeria and, belatedly, Libya, have strengthened the perception that the Maghreb is in the midst of a lucrative regional arms race fuelled by buyers and sellers alike.
• Xinhua – General Ahmed Abdallah, a senior military official of Libya, is on a visit in Mauritania to discuss Nouakchott’s participation in the African Union’s peacekeeping force, security sources said
• AFRICOM – U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) opened its annual Theater Security Cooperation Conference November 16, 2009, a premier event that builds the foundation for the command’s activities with its African partners over the next three years

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates welcomes Prince Khalid bin Sultan, the Saudi Arabian assistant minister of defense and aviation, for talks on the current conflict in Yemen at the Pentagon, Nov. 17, 2009. (photo by R. D. Ward)

The Global War

• US Navy – The Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) officially departed 5th Fleet and entered 6th Fleet’s Area of Operations when the multipurpose amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5) transited the Suez Canal and entered into the Mediterranean Sea recently.
• MEMRI – On November 17, 2009, Al-Qaeda’s media wing Al-Sahab released an Urdu-language audio interview with Ustadh Ahmad Farooq, described as “Al-Qaeda’s [official] in charge of the Da’wah and Media Department for Pakistan.”
• Washington Times – The sea lanes of the South Atlantic have become a favored route for drug traffickers carrying narcotics from Latin America to West and North Africa, where al Qaeda-related groups are increasingly involved in transporting the drugs to Europe, intelligence officials and counternarcotics specialists say. A Middle Eastern intelligence official said his agency has picked up “very worrisome reports” of rapidly growing cooperation between Islamic militants operating in North and West Africa and drug lords in Latin America.
• Transparency International – As the world economy begins to register a tentative recovery and some nations continue to wrestle with ongoing conflict and insecurity, it is clear that no region of the world is immune to the perils of corruption, according to Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), a measure of domestic, public sector corruption released today.
• Charles Taylor trial – After his cross-examination got off to a stumble last week over the use of “new evidence,” Charles Taylor today admitted to prosecutors that he shared information with the spy agency of the same country he has accused of plotting his downfall: the United States. Mr. Taylor also dismissed as “nonsense” prosecution allegations that he has been misusing his phone privileges while in jail to try to influence testimony of his defense witnesses

Sights & Sounds

Africa Today – The leader of the Rwandan Hutu militias in the eastern Congo is arrested in Germany. Kenya edges closer to a new constitution. And corruption remains a serious challenge in African countries.

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Worldview – Former communist rebels have been staging protests in Nepal since May, when they pulled out of a coalition government. We’ll talk politics with Nepal’s Foreign Minister

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TIME – TIME’s best invention of the year may send Americans back to the Moon and put the first human on Mars

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