US seeks death penalty for 9/11 plotters in New York trial

The US will seek the death penalty (a punishment imposed for breaking a law, rule, or contract) for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind (a person who plans and directs a complex scheme or enterprise) of the September 11 attacks, in a New York court just blocks from where the World Trade Centre once stood.

Iraq MPs approve election reform

The Iraqi parliament has approved a crucial election law ahead of a general election due in January 2010.

The UN had warned that it could not guarantee to endorse the election if the bill had not been approved.

There have been fears that delaying the election could undo recent progress towards greater stability.

The poll is seen as crucial to democracy in Iraq, and could impact on the US plan for a military pullout.

Japanese FM says

Japanese FM says no base deal during Obama visit

TOKYO – Japan's foreign minister said Sunday that no deal on relocating U.S. troop on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa can be expect during President Ba rack Obama visit this week, saying the issue need more time to resolve.

Obama is schedul to arrive Friday, and a meeting with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is on the agenda. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Sunday on TV Asahi that an agreement between the heads of state holds heavy meaning but cannot be expect to be complet during Obama visit.

Washington and Tokyo agreed in 2006 that the Marine airfield in Futenma, a crowded city on Okinawa, would be relocated to another part of the island. But Japan's government changed after August election, and Okinawan have push to move the base off the island entirely.

The new administration is pushing for a slightly more assertive Japan, and Hatoyama has said he wants to resolve the base issue more democratically than previous governments and wants to win the support of Okinawa.

Okinawa residents have long been concerned about base-related crime, noise and environmental damage.

On Sunday, thousands gathered to protest in Nago city on Okinawa, the most likely site for the troop transfer, police said.

Okinawan newspaper Ryukyu Shimpo said 21,000 people took part and demanded Hatoyama oppose the relocation when he meets Obama. Police estimated the crowd at 6,000.

On Saturday, more than 2,000 people staged a protest rally in Kadena, also on Okinawa, which has a U.S. air base. An expansion of Kadena is also being considered as one solution to the relocation problem.

"The loud noise of the aircraft is unbearable. We will not accept a plan to consolidate the bases, no matter what," Kadena Mayor Tokujitsu Miyagi was quoted as saying by the Kyodo News agency.

The United States has about 47,000 troops in Japan under a half-century-old security pact, more than half on Okinawa.

Tensions on Okinawa over the huge military presence go back for decades, but a furor erupted in 1996 when three U.S. servicemen were convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl. Adding to the discontent was a 2004 crash of a U.S. helicopter that burst into flames on a university campus, although it caused no injuries on the ground.

Okada said the government is looking at other options for the Futenma base, including expanding Kadena, or moving the base to the island of Iwo Jima.

"Options are being studied," he said, while refusing to comment on what the government might do if they don't pan out. "If we rush to a conclusion, and that can't be realized, that would be an even bigger problem."

Sex education will help gay children

As a gay child, and in common with many gay children, I was terrifi for most of my school life. My earliest sexual encounters which all occurred before the age of consent were unsafe and I constantly felt that I could somehow be in trouble for who I was.

If I did receive any sex education that seemed relevant, though appall to me, it came in the form of an almost annual scandal the suspension and expulsion of a couple of boys unfortunate enough to be caught in some forbidden clinch. We were either invisible or bullied by our peer and those in authority, denied information about ourselve and denied the right for our sexuality to be just one of the many thing that made us who we were.

Of course, this was almost 25 years ago for me and many positive change have swept through society since then. We have an equal age of consent, anti-hate crime laws and more positive role models. I am deeply heartened that the government has finally done the decent thing and attempted to make proper sex education available to all schoolchildren and that this will now include information about homosexuality and civil partnerships.

This is not just about tackling the ever rising HIV figures. It is good because it is right. It is right that children should be allowed to come of age comfortably into their sexuality, it is right that every child be valued and nurtured, it is right that they should be given the information with which to protect themselves, it is right that they should grow up free from bullying based on a fundamental part of their personalities. It is right that they should grow up free from shame and fully equipped to enter healthily into the adult world of romantic relationships.

My pleasure at this big step forward is tempered by some predictable frustration that there is, as usual, a religious get-out clause.

Schools will be allowed to teach the subject "in line with the context, values and ethos of the school". More than a quarter of all schools in the UK are faith schools. This adds up to a lot of children who will potentially be denied these basic rights. This is a lot of children to be told that the best they can hope for is the call to chastity.

I was chilled to read a statement from the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales which said: "We are comforted in the knowledge that our schools and colleges will do an exceptional job in providing sex and relationships education, set within the teachings of the Catholic church." So does this mean that (in taxpayer-funded time) they will still be able to describe homosexuals (as well as masturbation) as "intrinsically disordered" and deny honest information about contraception and safer sex?

It is time to say no to that. We must have a rational set of fact-based resources for all children regardless of their faith backgrounds taught in schools, funded by the taxpayers. Let the churches say whatever they want within the confines of their own pulpits, but leave the indoctrination there.

Gay people are often, laughably, accused by their detractors of driving a "homosexual agenda". But if there is such an agenda let it be that no child will be left feeling bad, scared or ignorant about their natural psycho sexual make-up.

UN relocating about 600 staff after Afghan attack

KABUL – The United Nations said Thursday that it is temporarily (a person employed on a temporary basis) relocating more than half its international staff in Afghanistan following last week's deadly Taliban attack against U.N. workers the most direct targeting of its employees during decades of work in the country.

The U.N. mission is still reeling from the pre-dawn assault on a guesthouse (a private house offering accommodation to paying guests) in the capital that left five U.N. staffers dead.

Though the U.N. insist it remain committed to Afghanistan, its action show how much security has degraded in the country and raise question about the future of its work if attack continue.

The relocation follow a U.N. decision on Monday to suspend much of its work in the volatile northwest of neighboring Pakistan because of increasingly targeted attacks.

In Afghanistan, some 600 nonessential staffer will be moved for three to four weeks to more secure locations both within and outside of Afghanistan while the body works to find safer permanent housing, spokesman Aleem Siddique said. He said they did not know how many would actually be leaving the country.

"We are not talking about pulling out," the head of the mission, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, told reporters.

He said a number of options were being considered for those who have to leave the country, including Dubai a typical destination for international workers in Afghanistan on rest breaks.

The majority of the U.N.'s 1,100 international staff in Afghanistan lives in the capital, spread out in more than 90 guesthouses.

The plan is to consolidate those living arrangements (the action, process, or result of arranging) in order to better protect staff, Siddique said. He stressed this was not a pullout or a scale-down in operations. About 80 percent of the U.N.'s staff in Afghanistan are Afghan citizens, and they will not be moved or halt their work, he said.

"We've been here for over half a century and we're not about to go any time soon," Siddique said.

Still, much U.N. work in Afghanistan has been put on hold since the attack and employees have been given the option to take leave while officials consider how to better protect employees.

Eide stressed that most of those who will be relocated are support staff, not those doing humanitarian work or leading urgent programs.

"We are doing everything we can do to minimize disruption of our work during this period," Eide said.

In the Oct. 28 attack, gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed a private guesthouse where dozens of U.N. staffers lived, killing five U.N. workers and three Afghans. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, saying they intentionally targeted U.N. employees working on the recent presidential election.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has requested an additional $75 million to help with security improvements and crisis preparation in Afghanistan after the attack, spokesman Adrian Edwards said.

"There is no going back to the previous situation we were in. Our security clearly isn't up to the job of dealing with these kinds of attacks," Edwards said.

In Pakistan, the U.N. has suspended long-term development work — projects with a five-year or longer time frame — in the tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province, regions that border Afghanistan and have large areas under Taliban control.

The U.N. has lost 11 staffers in attacks in Pakistan this year, including last month's bombing of the World Food Program's office in Islamabad that killed five people.

America,Stop kneeling before Israel

Barack Obama has been busy offering the Jewish People blessings for Rosh Hashanah, and recording a flattering video for the President's Confernce in Jerusalem and an other Yitzhak Rabin's me morial rally. Only sheikh Hassan Nasrallah surpasses him in terms of sheer output of recorded remarks.
In all the video, Obama heaps sticky-sweet praise on Israel, even though he has spent nearly a year fruitlessly lobbying for Israel to be so kind as to do something, anything even just a temporary freeze on sttlement building to advance the peace process.
The president's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, has also been busy, shuttling between a funeral and a memorial ,in order to find favor with Israelis. Polls have shown that Obama is increasingly unpopular here, with an approval rating of only 6 to 10 percent.
He decided to address Israelis by video, but a persuasive speech won't persuade anyone to end the occupation. He simply should have told the Israeli people the truth. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived here last night, will certainly express similar sentiments: "commitment to Israel's security," strategic alliance, the need for peace, and so on,
Before no other country on the planet does the United States kneel and plead like this, In other trouble spots, America takes a different tone. It bombs in Afghanistan, invades Iraq and threatens sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Did anyone in washington consider begging saddam Hussein to withdraw from occupied territory in Kuwait?
But Israel the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building sttlements and abusing the Palestinians, receives different treatment. Another massage to the national ego in one video, more embarrassing praise in another.
Now is the time to say to the United States: Enough flattery. If you don't change. As long as Israel feels the United States is in its pocket, and that America's automatic veto will save it from condemmations and sanctions. That it will receive massive aid unconditionally, and that it can continue waging punitive, lethal campaigns without a word from washington, killing, destroying and imprisoning without the world's policeman making a sound, it will continye in its ways.
Illegal acts like the occupation and settlement expansion, and offensives that may have involved war crimes, as lin Gaza, deserve a different approach. If America and the world had issued condemantions after Operation
Summer Rains in 2006 which left 400 Palestinians dead and severe infrastrueture damage in the firest mahor operation in Gaza since the disengagement then Operation Cast Lead never would have been launched.
It is true that unlike all the world's other trublemakers, Israel is viewed as a Western democracy, but Israel of 2009 is a country whose language is force. Anwar Sadat may have been thelast leader to win our hearts with optimistic, hope-igniting speeches. If he were to visit Israel today, he would be jeered off the stage. The Syrian president pleads for peace and Israel callously dismisses him the United States begs for a settlement free ze and Israel turns up its nose. This is what happens when there are no consequences for Israel's inaction.
When clinton returns to Washington, she should advocate a sharp policy change toward Israel. Israeli hearts can no longer be won with hope, promises of a better future or sweet talk, for this is no longer Israel's language. For something to change, Israel must understand that perpetuating the status quo will exact a painful price.
Israel of 2009 is a spoiled country, arrogant and condescending, convinced that it deserves everything and that it has the power to make a fool of America and the world.The United States has engendered this situation, which endangers the entire Mideast and Israel itself. That is why there needs to be a turning point in the coming year Washington needs to finally say no to Israel and the occupation. An unambiguous,presidential no.

Germany's Merkel:

Germany's Merkel: advocate of strong US ties

BERLIN — Angela Merkel, the first leader of reunited Germany to grow up under communist rule, has worked as chancellor to warm up ties with the United States — a country she couldn't travel to until she was in her mid-30s.

The former East German physicist, also the first woman to lead her country, restored cordiality to ties strained over the Iraq war while firmly but diplomatically acknowledging political differences.

The conservative's address to Congress Tuesday came weeks after she won a new four-year term at the head of a new center-right coalition.

That triumph further cements the former East German scientist's status — awarded by Forbes magazine four years running — as the world's most powerful woman.

When she came to power in 2005, Merkel inherited chilly relations with the administration of George W. Bush, who was irked by predecessor Gerhard Schroeder's strident criticism of the Iraq invasion.

Merkel worked hard on friendly ties with Bush, earning an invitation to his Texas ranch in 2007. But she also showed that she is no pushover, winning respect by publicly criticizing the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

She has built up a solid working relationship with President Barack Obama, seen by many in Germany as a fellow pragmatist.

Merkel has praised the United States' contribution to making her country "reunited, a partner in Europe and in the trans-Atlantic community."

She says she enjoys "close cooperation" with Obama and that Germany is a "reliable and intensive partner" for America, with which it works closely on issues such as Iran's nuclear program.

Still, there is potential for tension. Germany has some 4,000 troops in the NATO mission in Afghanistan, which is unpopular at home. A parliamentary mandate allows for a maximum of 4,500 soldiers, and that appears unlikely to increase in the near future.

Merkel, 55, has been a leading European advocate of strong action to combat climate change, legislation on which is only slowly making its way through the U.S. Congress.

Berlin is lukewarm at best about Muslim Turkey's bid for membership of the European Union; Washington is a strong supporter of Turkey's EU aspirations.

At home, Merkel's capable but cautious leadership has earned her consistently high popularity ratings since 2005. She prefers to listen and consider before acting.

The election strengthened her, allowing her to dump a "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats, Germany's second-biggest party.

She has switched to a new alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats that aims to spur growth in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, in part through future tax cuts, but will face a stronger opposition in parliament.

Merkel is the daughter of a Protestant pastor who moved his family to the east when she was very young. She told Congress Tuesday that America "was simply unreachable to me" until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

"The wall, barbed wire and orders to shoot limited my access to the free world," she said, adding that films and books smuggled in by relatives from the west helped form her picture of the U.S.

"I was enthusiastic for the American dream — the opportunity for everyone to be successful, to become something through their own efforts," she added. Merkel said she flew to the U.S. for the first time in 1990.

Merkel, who was working as a scientist in 1989, entered politics in her mid-30s as communism crumbled.

"I really enjoyed being a physicist," Merkel said recently. "But after the wall fell, politics became my passion."

She got involved in a new political group, Democratic Awakening, and became a spokeswoman in 1990 for East Germany's first and only democratically elected government.

Later that year, she was elected to reunified Germany's parliament for the party of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who swiftly put her in his Cabinet.

I won't be rushed on troops

Obama:

US President Barack Obama has told a military audience (the assembled spectators or listeners at an event) he will not be hurried as he considers whether to alter US strategy (a plan designed to achieve a particular long-term aim) in Afghanistan.

I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way. I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely (used for emphasis or to express agreement) necessary, Mr Obama said during a visit to Naval Air Station Jacksonville in Florida.

Mr Obama is debating (a formal discussion in a public meeting or legislative assembly) whether to send tens of thousands more troops to the country to curb the Taliban-led uprising.

Doubts about bolstering the US force grew after widespread (spread among a large number or over a large area) fraud marred the August 20 presidential election, raising doubt whether the US and its Nato allies had a reliable partner in the fight against the militant.

Afghan officials will hold a run-off election on November 7 between President Hamid Karzai and challenger Abdullah after United Nations-backed auditors threw out nearly a third of the incumbent's votes, dropping him below the 50% threshold required for a first-round win in the 36-candidate field.

Matthew Hoh, who fought in Iraq and joined the US State Department after leaving the military, resign from his post as the senior US civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban stronghold. He said he believed the war was simply fuell the uprising.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the US's presence in Afghanistan," Mr Hoh wrote in his resignation letter, dated September 10 but published on Tuesday.

Pakistan arrests 12 Iranians for illegal infiltration

QUETTA, Pakistan — Authorities in Pakistan on Monday interrogated 12 Iranians who were arrested for illegally (immigrant) crossing the border with Iran, Pakistan officials said.

There are 12 Iranians who have been arrest along with two vehicle, Mohammad Akbar Durrani, home secretary of Pakistan's western province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran, told AFP.

"They are being interrogated," Durrani said, declin to give any detail on the men identiti.

"We inform the Foreign Office about the arrests," he added.

A border official said 11 Iranian Revolutionary (involving or causing dramatic change) Guards were arrested after they crossed the border into Pakistan, but he spoke on condition (the state of something or someone, with regard to appearance, fitness, or working order) of anonymity and there was no other confirmation.

A paramilitary spokesman said only that "some Iranians" who intruded four kilometr 2.4 miles into Pakistani territory were arrested at Mashkail, around 400 kilometres 240 miles west of Quetta.

Al-Alam, the Iranian TV news channel, rejected reports that the men were Revolutionary Guards, and quoted an "informed source" as saying negotiations were under way to secure the release of the men, who were border guards.

"No Revolutionary Guards were arrested," Al-Alam quoted its source as saying.

"A border patrol group not Revolutionary Guards were detained while chasing a vehicle which went into the Pakistani side. There is ongoing negotiation for their release."

Iran says that those behind an October 18 attack that killed 42 people, including 15 members of its elite Revolutionary Guards, sneaked across the Pakistan border.

On Monday, Guards chief Mohammad Ali Jafari once again ramped up pressure on Islamabad to hand over Abdolmalek Rigi, the leader of the Sunni rebel group Jundallah Soldiers of God who Tehran says is based in Pakistan.

We are expecting this government to cooperate with Iran in apprehending (arrest for a crime) this guy Rigi, he said, adding that Islamabad was under the "influence and pressure of America."

Islamabad has strongly denied that the Jundallah attack was launched from its territory.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway - President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Friday on a stunning decisions designed the encourage has initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions that the Muslim worlds and stress diplomacy and cooperation raters than unilateralism

Nobel observers were shocked by the unexpected choice so early in the Obama presidency, which began less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama woke up to the news a little before 6 a.m. EDT. The White House had no immediate comment on the announcement, which took the administration by surprise.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee decided not to inform Obama before the announcement because it didn't want to wake him up, committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said.

"Waking up a president in the middle of the night, this isn't really something you do," Jagland said.

The Nobel Committee lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation but recognized initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

'World's attention'
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," Jagland said.

Obama's election and foreign policy moves caused a dramatic improvement in the image of the U.S. around the world. A 25-nation poll of 27,000 people released in July by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found double-digit boosts to the percentage of people viewing the U.S. favorably in countries around the world. That indicator had plunged across the world under President George W. Bush.

Still, the U.S. remains at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Congress has yet to pass a law reducing carbon emissinsan ter asben itlesiniicntreucio i gobl ucear stocpiles since Obama took office.

"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is still at an early stage. He is only beginning to act," said former Polish President Lech Walesa, a 1983 Nobel Peace laureate.

"This is probably an encouragement for him to act. Let's see if he perseveres. Let's give him time to act," Walesa said.