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Obama takes a different approach as commander in chief

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

International Herald Tribune - By Sheryl Gay Stolberg - Mar. 23 (News Analysis) - As he heads toward his next big commander-in-chief moment — a decision on strategy for Afghanistan, possibly this week — Mr. Obama, by necessity and temperament, is wearing the role in ways distinctly different from his predecessor, George W. Bush.

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Energy secretary tries to adjust to U.S. politics

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

International Herald Tribune - By John M. Broder - Mar. 23 (News Report) - As a physicist, Steven Chu has seen atoms suspended in a powerful laser beam and DNA stretched out in a vacuum chamber. But in his new job as energy secretary, Dr. Chu is observing phenomena he never saw in the science laboratory. At a recent Senate hearing, for example, he witnessed a junior cabinet member (himself) being systematically dissected by a senior senator (John McCain). Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, was unhappy when Dr. Chu affirmed the Obama administration's intention to suspend work at a planned nuclear waste site in Nevada. "What's wrong with Yucca Mountain, Dr. Chu?" he demanded repeatedly as Dr. Chu tried to explain. "I think we can do a better job," Dr. Chu finally replied.

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China blocks Coke's bid for juice company

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

International Herald Tribune - By David Barboza - Mar. 18 (News Report) - China said on Wednesday that it has rejected a bid by the Coca-Cola Company to acquire one of the country's biggest beverage makers for about $2.4 billion. The move blocked what would have been the biggest foreign takeover of a Chinese company and suggested Beijing is still uncomfortable with foreign ownership of big Chinese companies.

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Pentagon rethinking old doctrine on 2 wars

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

International Herald Tribune - By Thom Shanker - Mar. 15 (News Analysis) - The protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are forcing the Obama administration to rethink what for more than two decades has been a central premise of American strategy: that the nation need only prepare to fight two major wars at a time. For more than six years now, the United States has in fact been fighting two wars, with more than 170,000 troops now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The military has openly acknowledged that the wars have left troops and equipment severely strained, and has said that it would be difficult to carry out any kind of significant operation elsewhere.

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Seeking justice, Chinese land in secret jails

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

International Herald Tribune - By Andrew Jacobs - Mar. 09 (Special Report) - They are often tucked away in the rough-and-tumble sections of the city's south side, hidden beneath dingy hotels and guarded by men in dark coats. Known as "black houses," they are unofficial jails for the pesky hordes of petitioners who flock to the capital seeking justice.

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German court rules against voting machines

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - Mar. 03 (News Report) - Germany's highest court ruled Tuesday that the use of voting machines in the country's last election was unconstitutional, a verdict that likely will mean no machines will be used when Germans vote this September.

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Israeli election appears tight

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Ethan Bronner, Isabel Kershner - Feb. 10 (Breaking News) - The centrist Kadima Party led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the more conservative Likud party led by Benjamin Netanyahu were locked in a tight battle for leadership Tuesday, with exit polls by Israeli media suggesting Kadima might win the parliamentary elections by a slim margin.

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The Mideast's one-state solution

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Muammar Quaddafi - Jan. 22 (Opinion) - if the present interdependence and the historical fact of jewish-palestinian co-extintence guide their leaders, and if they can see beyond the horizon of the recent violence and thirst for revenge toward a long-term sollution, then these two peoples will come to realize, i hope sooner rather than later, that living under one roof is the only option for a lasting peace.

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Brooks: The politics of cohesion

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By David Brooks - Jan. 20 (Editorial) - Obama's challenge will be to translate the social repair that has occurred over the past decade into political and governing repair.

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Tensions rise on Korean Peninsula

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Choe Sang-Hun - Jan. 18 (News Report) - South Korea placed more soldiers at frontier guard posts and told its fishermen to refrain from sailing near North Korean waters on Sunday, a day after the North Korean military declared an "all-out confrontational posture" against the South and threatened a naval clash. The North Korean threat on Saturday came in the same day when an American scholar said North Korean officials told him that they had "weaponized" enough plutonium for roughly four or five nuclear bombs. Also Saturday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry said the country would maintain its "status as a nuclear weapons state" as long as it perceived a nuclear threat from the United States.American intelligence officials have previously estimated that the North had harvested enough fuel for six or more bombs, although it has never been clear whether the North constructed the weapons. The scholar, Selig Harrison, said the officials had not defined what "weaponized" meant, but the implication was that they had built nuclear arms.

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Israeli cabinet to weigh cease-fire with Gaza

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Ethan Bronner, Mark Landler - Jan. 17 (News Report) - Israel's security cabinet is expected to meet on Saturday night to declare a cease-fire in Gaza and will keep its forces there in the short term while the next stage of an agreement with Egypt is worked out.

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In improving ties with India, Bush can claim a foreign policy success

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Anand Giridharadas - Jan. 11 (News Analysis) - Manmohan Singh leads the largest democracy on Earth. But the Indian prime minister is gentle of manner and speaks in whispers. One struggles to imagine him professing love without shyness to his own wife. And so it meant something when he recently laid the L-word on a little-loved man: George W. Bush. "This may be my last visit to you during your presidency," Singh told the U.S. president in Washington in September, "and let me say, thank you very much. The people of India deeply love you."

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Bonfire of profanities

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By William Safire - Jan. 04 (Review) - Today we are going to deal with the media coverage of profanities, expletives, vulgarisms, obscenities, execrations, and epithets, nouns often lumped together by the Bluenose Generation as coarseness, crudeness, bawdiness, scatology or swearing. But roundheeled readers should stop rubbing their hands because the deliberately shocking subject can be treated with decorum, in plain words, without the titillating examples of "dirty words." If you want to fulminate about such prissiness about prurience in print, feel free to express your outrage with the typographical device to which cartoonists have resorted for generations: !#*&%@%!!!

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Afghan corruption: Everything for sale

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Dexter Filkins - Jan. 02 (Special Report) - Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft.

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Building a bridge to a better life

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Charly Wilder - Dec. 26 (Special Report) - Today, Senni's entrepreneurship has equally compelling, though more altruistic, motives. Having founded and run a successful taxi company, ATA France, and made millions, Senni, 32, is rallying other businesspeople to reach into rough neighborhoods like his and help other young people.

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How to win Islam over

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Olivier Roy, Justin Vaisse - Dec. 23 (Opinion) - Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its "leaders."

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The drum beating in Kashmir

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By H.D.S. Greenway - Dec. 17 (Opinion) - Pakistan is not going to bow down before India, and although there have been some arrests, there is not the political will necessary in Pakistan to thoroughly dismantle Lashkar.

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U.S. security

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Peter Bergen - Dec. 15 (Opinion) - ... the American Muslim community has rejected the Qaeda ideological virus. American Muslims have instead overwhelmingly signed up for the American Dream, enjoying higher incomes and educational levels than the average.

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Pakistan walks delicate line with a radical

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Richard A. Oppel, Salman Masood - Dec. 13 (Special Report) - Under intense pressure to show some resolve against homegrown terrorism, the Pakistani government claims to have arrested the Lashkar official suspected of running the Mumbai attacks, and then on Thursday and Friday it shut down dozens of Jamaat-ud-Dawa offices and said it had detained many of the group's members.

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Official accountability and the U.S. Supreme Court

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - Dec. 11 (Editorial) - In America, no one is supposed to be above the law. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has spent the last eight years undermining that fundamental ideal.

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Indian foreign minister denies "threatening call" to Pakistani leader

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - Dec. 07 (News Report) - The Indian Foreign Ministry issued a statement Sunday morning officially denying that its minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had made a "threatening call" to President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan at the height of the recent attacks on Mumbai, prompting Zardari's government to put the Pakistani Air Force on high alert. "I had made no such telephone call," Mukherjee said in the statement. "It is, however, worrying that a neighboring state might even consider acting on the basis of such a hoax call, try to give it credibility with other states, and confuse the public by releasing the story in part."

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Obama's best pick yet: Jones as national security adviser

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Albert R. Hunt - Dec. 07 (News Report) - Last week, the world was taken by President-elect Barack Obama's new foreign policy team: Hillary Rodham Clinton as U.S. secretary of state and Robert Gates, who is being kept on as head of the Defense Department. Both choices are remarkable. There has not been anything approaching the selection of Clinton since 1980, when Ronald Reagan offered the vice presidency to an old rival, the ex-President Gerald Ford; in contrast, the Clinton appointment is probably a good idea. Only a year ago, a central theme of the Obama insurgency campaign was his opposition to the war in Iraq. Imagine if it was suggested then that he would win the election and keep President George W. Bush's defense chief. This is a testament to both Gates and to the recent U.S. success in Iraq. Yet the most impressive, and perhaps important, choice may have been Obama's tapping General James Jones to be his national security adviser.

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UN climate official defends global emissions program

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Elisabeth Rosenthal - Dec. 05 (News Report) - After a U.S. government report this week called into question the efficacy of the United Nations' global trading scheme to reduce greenhouse emissions, the top UN climate official defended the program Friday and said he expected the United States to commit to emissions targets under a new administration. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, called the report, released this week by the U.S. General Accounting Office, "constructive criticism," rather than "an excuse not to participate."

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Is U.S. research funding badly spent?

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Steve Lohr - Nov. 30 (News Report) - Barack Obama may have to surrender his BlackBerry when he moves into the White House, in the interests of presidential security and confidentiality. But there is every sign that his administration will pursue a pro-technology agenda. In speeches and policy statements, Obama has repeatedly emphasized a need to maintain America's technology leadership in the world and to invest government funds to do so. His campaign platform declared that government policy must "foster home-grown innovation" and "help ensure the competitiveness of United States technology-based businesses." Two of his favorite proposals - roundly endorsed by technology industry leaders and university scientists - are to double federal funding for basic research over the next several years and to train many thousands more scientists and engineers.

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Constituencies shrinking as Republicans stumble

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Albert R. Hunt - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - Republicans running under the deadly drags of a financial crisis, an unpopular president and the political cycle didn't do as poorly in the U.S. elections as some had feared. Barack Obama won by about seven percentage points, more than Bill Clinton in his first victory, about the same as George H.W. Bush in 1988, and less than Ronald Reagan in 1980. The party lost almost two dozen House of Representatives seats and seven or eight Senate seats. These are severe setbacks, but they are short of devastating.

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