A brief world news roundup for 20 November 2009.

United States & the Americas

• Washington Post – A Senate committee on Thursday morning launched the first public hearing into the Fort Hood shooting attack with a focus on the perils of homegrown extremism and “political correctness” and with partial cooperation from the Obama administration.
• FOX – A top Senate Republican accused Attorney General Eric Holder of “making bad history” in his decision to send professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators to New York for trial in civilian court.
• canada.com – The Canadian military has decided against putting missiles on the unmanned aerial vehicles it now operates in Afghanistan. Defence Minister Peter MacKay was briefed in March by air force officials on the various options for arming the drones, according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.
• Prensa Latina – The governments of Colombia and Ecuador have resumed talks on Thursday in the framework of the Bi-national Border Commission (COMBIFRON), aimed at normalizing bilateral relations. The meeting is crucial for the roadmap the two governments agreed in New York to normalize diplomatic relations, broken in 2008 after an illegal Colombian military incursion in Ecuador
• Reuters – Venezuelan soldiers on Thursday blew up two makeshift foot bridges that stretched across the border to Colombia in the latest incident to stoke a diplomatic dispute between the Andean neighbors.
• El Universal – Determined to minimize the presence of the private sector and increase the state’s role in order to build a socialist economy, where profits no longer will be the focus of economy, Hugo Chávez’s administration has increased control over the means of production.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• RIA Novosti – Ukraine and Russia have prepared a strategic cooperation contract in the nuclear energy sphere until 2020, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said.
• RIA Novosti – A Russian naval task force led by the Admiral Chabanenko destroyer will resume an anti-piracy mission off the Horn of Africa later this month, the Navy said on Thursday. It said the destroyer and an auxiliary vessel were currently crossing the Mediterranean and should reach the Suez Canal on November 23.
• RFERL – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has dismissed an influential Kremlin media adviser for breaching government rules, the first such sacking of his presidency, local media reported today.
• NY Times – A dispute between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas supplies escalated on Thursday, with an aide to the Russian president calling Ukraine’s warnings of a possible gas crisis “political blackmail.”
• Kavkaz Center – According to information from publication “Segodnya (Today)”, a special operation commenced in Russian terrorist gang FSB by coded name “Yermolov”. The goal of operation is exposing Russians as well as representatives of ethnic groups feeling sympathetic towards Jihad in Caucasus and secretly register them on the book in Lyubyanka street. Collection of information is performed by the secret intelligence service of FSB consisting of employees of fake nationalistic organizations “Russkiy Obraz (Russian Way)”, “Russkiy verdikt (Russian Verdict)” and so on.
• Caucasian Knot – Ibragim Mankiev, a native of Ingushetia, who was kidnapped in Egypt, was in fact detained by local special agencies as a suspect of links with Wahhabites.
• Monika Shepherd – Hydropower hydra once again ensnares Tajikistan
• Itar Tass – Director of the Federal Service for Control of Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Circulation Viktor Ivanov notes that the Afghan drug trafficking from Iran with further smuggling to the North Caucasus had intensified.
• APA – Today is anniversary of one of the most tragic events in the history of independent Azerbaijan. 18 years have passed since shooting down of Mi-8 helicopter over Garakend Village of Azerbaijan’s Khojavand Region by Armenians, APA reports.
• abc – The Azerbaijani State Statistics Committee (SSC) informs that in January to October, 2009, transportation of Kazakh oil via BTC pipeline named after Heydar Aliyev totaled 1.5 million tons. In October, 200,000 tons were transported versus 100,000 tons in September, 200,000 tons in August, 92,300 tons in July, 152,900 in June, 163,000 tons in May, 137,700 tons in April, 152,800 tons in March, 240,200 tons in February and 161,100 tons in January of the year.

An 817th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron C-17 Globemaster III sits on the parking ramp at dusk at an air base in Southwest Asia Nov. 18 (photo by Tech. Sgt. Tony Tolley)

Middle East

• MNF Iraq – Soldiers from the 44th Iraqi Army arrested a Kata’ib Hezbollah cell member during a joint security operation conducted in northeastern Baghdad today. Iraqi Army and U.S. advisors searched a building for and found the Kata’ib Hezbollah member, who allegedly leads a sniper and missiles group in addition to being part of a media cell that records attacks against security forces in Iraq
• Ahmed Ali – Emerging Trends in Iraqi Politics
• RFERL – A U.S.-backed Sunni militia leader whose arrest provoked violence between Sunni fighters and forces of Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government has been sentenced to death for murder and kidnapping, a court spokesman said.
• ynet – The militant Hezbollah group says that Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has been re-elected as the group’s leader for a sixth term.
• UPI – Hezbollah announced Thursday it has drafted a new political document outlining the nature of the resistance, its second such measure since 1985.
• Daily Star – Internal Security Forces (ISF) arrested a Tebnine teacher on suspicion of spying for Israel, media reports said Thursday. The reports added that ISF had put the man under close watch for seven months prior to his arrest Wednesday afternoon. Al-Akhbar newspaper quoted sources at the ISF directorate as saying that the 54-year-old man admitted to spying for Israel, adding that he was recruited by a man who fled to Israel
• Press TV – Another Saudi soldier has been killed in border clashes with Houthi forces, bringing to six the kingdom’s death toll in its offensive against the Yemeni resistance fighters. The news came on Thursday, hours after the Shia fighters said they destroyed a number of Saudi military vehicles and tanks in northern Yemen.
• Al Arabiya – The Yemeni army succeeded in aborting an attack on the northern governorate of Saada, killing and injuring dozens of insurgents, according to media reports Thursday
• Saba – Saboteurs of the fans of the southern anti-government movement burn a military ration vehicle in Dhale, an attack described by the authorities as a shift to an armed voilence by the movement
• News Yemen – Official and tribal mediation has succeeded to free a Japanese engineer tribesmen from Arhab, north Sana’a, kidnapped on Sunday. The Japanese engineer, Tak Yu Himua, 63, has been handed to the Mediation Committee after signing a written commitment between the mediators and tribesmen to get a member of the clan at the Political Security Prison in Sana’a released, member of the Mediation Committee AbdulJalil Kanan told News Yemen.

Iran

• Office of Naval Intelligence – Iran’s Naval Forces: From Guerilla Warfare to a Modern Naval Strategy
• Mehr – The International Atomic Energy Agency is legally obliged to provide nuclear fuel with a purity of 20 percent for a research reactor in Tehran, Rafsanjani, chairman of the Expediency Council, told the Swedish ambassador to Tehran.
• Fars – UN inspectors are expected to visit Iran’s Fordo enrichment facility on Thursday, the Iranian envoy to the IAEA announced
• Press TV – A senior Iranian judicial official has warned that any illegal protests in the future will be met with a ‘crushing response’.

South Asia

• AFPS – An Afghan-international force detained a key Taliban explosives facilitator and another militant while searching a compound in Kandahar province. This facilitator maintained direct contact with several senior local Taliban leaders and maintained supply lines to other militant elements in the area. In another operation, an Afghan-international security force killed several enemy militants and detained a sought-after al-Qaida bombing network facilitator and another militant in Ghazni province while searching a compound suspected of militant activity.
• The Australian -  The veteran mujaheddin leader once married to Australian woman Rabiah Hutchinson has re-emerged as a key political and military strategist for the Taliban in its insurgency in Afghanistan.
• Press TV – Amid the rising number of civilian causalities in Afghanistan, a bomber targeting a police convoy has killed ten people and injured a dozen more in the troubled south.
• Geo – The death toll in suicide attack outside a judicial complex at Khyber Road on Thursday has climbed to 20, while over 50 people were wounded. Police personnel and lawyers were among the dead. A CCTV footage of the attack showed that traffic was moving freely when a powerful blast suddenly took place, sending smoke into the sky. The attacker was on foot and was trying to enter the judicial complex.
• Dawn – The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) has verified information about 37,787 displaced families (about 275,000 people). At least 17,564 families claiming to have been displaced from South Waziristan were declared ineligible for assistance because their records showed multiple registration, invalid ID cards or because they were not from that tribal agency.
• Geo – At least 23 militants were killed during last 24 hours in Orkazai Agency, Hangu and Kurram Agency. The militant commander Umer Khatab Mehsud also included among the deceased.
• Times of India – Nearly a dozen passengers were injured when six coaches of a passenger train derailed on Thursday night after Maoist rebels blew up a stretch of railway track in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district
• Asia Times – The Sri Lankan government has announced that the thousands of displaced Tamils still living in camps will be resettled within two months, a decision widely viewed as a public relations move prior to elections that will now take place after a radical change in the political firmament.

Far East & Pacific

• Japan MFA – First, on Japan-China relations, this evening, Foreign Minister Okada will receive Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. Foreign Minister Yang visits Japan this time on the invitation of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and will stay until Sunday, the 22nd.
• Yonhap – China’s defense minister will visit North Korea, media reports from Pyongyang said Friday, in a rare trip that follows U.S. President Barack Obama’s journey to the Asian region.
• U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission – The Report details stepped up efforts by China to pentrate U.S. computer networks, particularly those of the U.S. government and contractors, and to obtain information by increasingly sophisticated espionage methods. “Although attribution is a problem in cyber attacks, the scale and coordination of the attacks strongly indicates Chinese state involvement,” said vice chairman Larry Wortzel. “In addition to harming U.S. interests, Chinese human and cyber espionage activities provide China with a method for leaping forward in economic, technological, and military development.”
• news.com.au – State media in communist North Korea, which is grappling with severe food shortages and a crumbling economy, has taken time out to urge its people to keep their hair tidy.
• BBC – Cambodia has taken over the running of the country’s Thai-owned air traffic control firm, in a deepening row between the two neighbouring countries. Cambodia also barred all Thai employees from turning up for work and put a Cambodian national in temporary charge.
• Bangkok Post – Border crossings along the Sungai Kolok river in Narathiwat province have been ordered closed in an effort to tighten security and smuggling between Thailand and Malaysia.

Europe

• ABC News – The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.
• Javno – More pensive poet than political pit-bull, Herman Van Rompuy, named the European Union’s first president on Thursday, earned his stripes dealing with Belgium’s bickering political class. Flemish yet francophile, the 62-year-old Christian Democrat prime minister has for months navigated a minefield trying to stablise the European kingdom divided between its Dutch-speaking north and poorer French-speaking south.
• euobserver – EU leaders from the centre-left political family have named Baroness Catherine Ashton, Britain’s EU commissioner for trade, as their preferred candidate for the new EU foreign minister post. The move makes Ms Ashton a strong contender due to an informal agreement that the centre-left will take the foreign minister job, leaving the president role to the centre-right.
• Balkan Insight – Kosovo’s government coalition has collapsed, it emerged on Thursday night. It is understood that the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, led by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, has broken its two year partnership with the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, headed by president Fatmir Sejdiu.

Africa

• Shabelle – at least two government soldiers have been killed and more than five others have been wounded in a fire exchange between the transitional government troops in the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses told Shabelle radio on Thursday.
• Al Jazeera – A Somali woman has been stoned to death for committing what a judge has said was adultery.
• NOW Lebanon – Egypt recalled its ambassador to Algeria on Thursday in response to attacks against Egyptian football fans in Sudan and businesses in Algeria, the official MENA news agency reported.
• Xinhua – Senior military officials of China and Senegal said Thursday they would enhance cooperation between the two armed forces.
• EarthTimes – Zimbabwe’s military has begun to withdraw from a contentious diamond field as private investors move in, the head of a South African mining company investing in the area was quoted Thursday as saying. Zimbabwe narrowly escaped having its Chiadzwa diamonds banned from certified world trade earlier this month.
• Zimbabwe Guardian – Mines minister Obert Mpofu did not float a tender to select prospective investors to partner government in diamond extraction in the Marange Diamond Fields amid allegations he overlooked better equipped and experienced diamond miners. Investigations by the Zimbabwe Independent revealed that Mpofu cherry-picked Canadile Investments and Mbada Minerals without going to tender.
• AP – An Ethiopian court on Thursday convicted 26 people who were accused of taking part in an alleged coup plot earlier this year and acquitted five others.
• Garowe – The Ethiopian government has dismissed claims by Ogaden rebels to have captured seven towns in the oil rich Somali region located in south eastern of Ethiopia.
• Magharebia – Tunisia and French this week are carrying out joint naval exercises near Bizerte, ANSA reported on Wednesday (November 18th). The manoeuvres reportedly aim to strengthen bilateral military co-operation in surveillance and maritime security.

A boat crew from USS Chosin approaches three Yemeni fisherman were spotted clinging to a piece of wood in the Gulf of Aden. Chosin is the flagship of Combined Joint Task Force 151, a multinational task force established to conduct counter-piracy operations under a mission-based mandate to actively deter, disrupt, and supress piracy off the coast of Somalia

The Global War

• NEFA Foundation – The NEFA Foundation has obtained a transcript of an interview, produced by the As-Sahab Media Foundation, with Dr. Ahmad Farooq, Senior Media Official, Al-Qaida in Pakistan. During the interview, Dr. Farooq was asked “how Pakistani individuals” had become a part of Al-Qaida, which “is commonly known as an Arab organization.”
• AP – Increasing numbers of English-language Web sites are spreading al-Qaida’s message to Muslims in the West. They translate writings and sermons once largely out of reach of English readers and often feature charismatic clerics like Anwar al-Awlaki, who exchanged dozens of e-mails with the Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood shootings.
• Hurriyet – Turkey’s Navy will buy six modern submarines to be built by Germany’s HDW shipyards at a price nearly 20 percent lower than what the Germans had originally offered, procurement officials said.

Sights & Sounds

Africa Today – Twenty six people found guilty of a failed coup plot in Ethiopia, one of those alleged to be behind it says it had nothing to do with him. Why squabbling legislators have delayed the presentation of Nigeria’s budget.

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Andrew Bacevich and David Frum: Reassessing the Freedom Agenda; Andrew dissents from the conventional wisdom on Afghanistan… Is Afghanistan just a distraction?… Debating what, if anything, America can do to improve Pakistan… Can we reduce the damage from Islam’s transition to modernity?… Andrew’s non-military plan for confronting terrorism… David: We can no longer insulate ourselves from the Muslim world

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CBC Dispatches – Elections coming. Americans leaving. Tensions rising. A view from the barricades in Iraq. And from the land behind God’s back, meet the “Burnesh” of the Balkans. Women who lead their lives as men. A year since the Mumbai attacks, some wounds have healed but life for one survivor has never been the same. Then, how Israel’s military culture helps make it the start-up-company capital of the world And, India’s tired of losing. We’ll hear its plan for dominating the world in international sport

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