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![Picture of the Day: 20 September, 2012
A soldier from the 1st Platoon, Delta Coy, of the U.S. army shares a bunch of grapes with children from the local Pashtun tribe after an ISAF night patrol came under attack a few nights earlier.
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The attack rocked the settlement near Kandahar Airfield during a joint-patrol with officers from the Afghan National Police in the Kandahar province.
Estimates by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are that militia attacks cost between 100-155 million dollars a year to stage, while the rest goes to “maintaining the insurgency,” says a new UN report, which also stated that the Taliban raised 400 million dollars last year through taxes, donations, extorting businessmen and narcotics dealers in Afghanistan.
Photo: Tony Karumba / Hi-Res](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_man1dkoDwK1rbh8f0o1_500.png)
Picture of the Day: 20 September, 2012
A soldier from the 1st Platoon, Delta Coy, of the U.S. army shares a bunch of grapes with children from the local Pashtun tribe after an ISAF night patrol came under attack a few nights earlier.
Chicago teachers suspend strike, classes to resume
Chicago teachers union officials voted to end a strike that halted classes for 350,000 students in the nation’s third-largest district and illustrated the bitter national struggle over changing how teachers are evaluated, hired and fired.
Classes are expected to resume Wednesday, city officials said, bringing a close to the seven-day strike. Tuesday’s vote by the union’s governing board came days after the city and the teachers union reached a tentative deal on a three-year contract. The union’s full membership must now ratify that deal in a vote that union leaders said would come within the next couple of weeks.
Source:The Wall Street Journal
Rahm Emanuel deems Chicago teachers strike “illegal”
The Chicago Teachers Union extended its strike into a second week on Sunday, after significant divisions emerged among union delegates over a deal that only a day before had been described by the union’s leader as “a good contract”.
The announcement came after nearly 800 union representatives, the House of Delegates, convened for several hours to decide whether to end a strike that has drawn national attention in the debate over teacher evaluations, job security and the length of a school day.
Source:The New York Times
![Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese opposition leader, embarks on historic U.S. trip
Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy campaigner who was elected to the Burmese parliament earlier this year, flew out of Yangon on Sunday ahead of her first visit to the U.S. in two decades.
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Due to arrive on Monday, the 18-day tour will be the latest round of her extraordinary return to the international stage since she was released from house arrest in 2010. It follows her visit to Europe earlier this year when she received the Nobel peace prize some 21 years after it was awarded to her.
The U.S. trip will begin in Washington, where she will meet a number of senior administration officials, including President Obama. She will also be bestowed with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honour of the U.S. Congress.
Suu Kyi, 67, will visit Burma ex-pat communities in San Francisco and New York, where she lived for two years in the late 1960s working at the UN.
While the visit is being billed as a celebration of both Suu Kyi’s life and of the opening up of Burma under the reformist government of President Thein Sein, the trip will not be without its diplomatic sensitivities.
The Burmese president is, himself, to make his first visit to the U.S. later this month to attend the annual UN general assembly, and there have been suggestions that by preceding him, Suu Kyi could over shadow his arrival.
There is also the delicate issue of the Rohingya Muslims, in the west of the country, who have been left in a “state of limbo” as they remain unrecognized as citizens by the Burmese regime and have, so far, been denied asylum in neighbouring countries.
Suu Kyi has so far failed to take a strong line over their plight, saying in June that she “did not know” whether Rohingya should be regarded as Burmese citizens, adding that “Burma should clarify its citizenship laws”.
Besides the Congressional Gold Medal award, Suu Kyi will also receive awards from the Asia Society and the Atlantic Council Global Citizen Award.
Image: Aung San Suu Kyi speaking at the World Economic Forum on East Asia 2012 (via Flickr / WEF)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_magk4xTFSa1rbh8f0o1_r1_500.png)
Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese opposition leader, embarks on historic U.S. trip
Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy campaigner who was elected to the Burmese parliament earlier this year, flew out of Yangon on Sunday ahead of her first visit to the U.S. in two decades.
Source: Guardian
![Obama honours officials killed in Libya who “embraced the American ideal”
Barack Obama marked the return of the bodies of four state department officials killed in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, including the ambassador to Libya, by saying their deaths must cause even the most hopeful to question a fundamental American belief in leaving the world a better place.
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Speaking next to the flag-draped coffins of the ambassador, Chris Stevens, and the three other victims at Andrews air force base in Maryland, the president praised each of the men in turn while again vowing to “bring to justice the ones who took them from us” and to “stand fast” against the continuing attacks on U.S. embassies as anti-American protests spread across the Middle East.
“They didn’t simply embrace the American ideal, they lived it. They embodied it. The courage, the hope and, yes, the idealism. That fundamental American belief that we can leave this world a little better than before,” he said. “I know that this awful loss, the terrible images of recent days, the pictures we’re seeing again today, have caused some to question this work. And there is no doubt that these are difficult days. In moments such as this, so much anger and violence, even the most hopeful among us must wonder.”
The president also mentioned the Libyans who took to the streets with homemade signs repudiating the killings.
Among those questioning on Friday was the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, and his running mate, Paul Ryan, who used the backdrop of the killings and protests to accuse Obama of a failure of leadership through weakness in confronting danger and betrayal of America’s closest ally in the region, Israel.
Romney spurned criticism that he distastefully exploited for political gain the deaths of the four Americans to press home criticism that the president is more willing to apologise to enemies than support friends.
“The American people are disturbed and reeling with the news around the world,” he said before calling on Obama to “get tougher” with the Egyptian government.
Ryan accused Obama of a “lack of moral clarity” and firmness in his foreign policy in confronting evil.
“Look across that region today, and what do we see? The slaughter of brave dissidents in Syria. Mobs storming American embassies and consulates. Iran four years closer to gaining a nuclear weapon. Israel, our best ally in the region, treated with indifference bordering on contempt by the Obama administration,” he told the conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington. “Amid all these threats and dangers, what we do not see is steady, consistent American leadership. In the days ahead, and in the years ahead, American foreign policy needs moral clarity and firmness of purpose. Only by the confident exercise of American influence are evil and violence overcome”.
Romney called on Obama to get tougher with Egypt, saying that the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo needs to ensure the security of foreign diplomats or risk losing $1.3bn in annual U.S. aid. The Republican candidate said aid should also be conditional on the state of Egyptian relations with Israel and the treatment of its Christian minority.
“I think for instance in Egypt we should make it very clear to maintain a relationship, a friendship, an alliance and financial support with the United States. Egypt needs to understand it must honour its peace treaty with Israel,” he said. “It must also protect the rights of the minorities in their nation. And finally among other things it must also protect the embassies of our nation and other nations”.
Romney also attacked Obama for declining to meet the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, when he visits the U.S., later this month. The Republican candidate called the move “an extraordinary confusing and troubling decision”.
“This is our closest ally and best friend in the Middle East,” Romney said at a New York fundraiser. “It stands between a nuclear Iran in some respects and a region that would have more stability without a nuclear Iran. And yet when the prime minister of Israel says, ‘I’m going to be in New York. Can we meet?’ And the president says, ‘No, I’m too busy,’ I can’t imagine that circumstance. I don’t know what the president is trying to send to the world in terms of a message but it does send a message”.
The White House has denied the president snubbed Netanyahu, saying it was merely a matter of logistics because they will not be in New York at the same time. Israeli officials have said Netanyahu offered to travel to Washington but was rebuffed. The White House denied it. However, the spat was seen as further evidence of the deepening divide between Washington and Jerusalem over how far to go in confronting Iran over its nuclear programme.
One of Romney’s foreign policy advisers, Richard Williamson, described Obama’s handling of the Middle East crisis as “amateur hour” and blamed it on the fact that respect of the U.S. has fallen.
“There’s a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you’d be in a different situation,” he told the Washington Post.
Other Republicans have accused the president of being too distracted by campaigning to focus sufficiently on the growing Middle East crisis.
“They’ve got to get out of campaign mode and get into leadership mode,” Congressman Randy Forbes, a member of the House of Representatives armed services committee, told Fox News. “And they really haven’t done that, they haven’t done it in this situation”.
The White House quickly accused Romney of exploiting a tragic situation for electoral gain.
“It is astonishing that the Romney campaign continues to shamelessly politicise a sensitive international situation,” the Obama campaign said. “The fact is that any president of either party is going to be confronted by crises while in office, and Governor Romney continues to demonstrate that he is not at all prepared to manage them”.
Image: Carry teams move flag draped transfer cases of the remains of the four Americans killed this week in Benghazi, Libya, from a transport plane. Sept. 14, at Andrews Air Force Base. (Carolyn Kaster / AP)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_maczoyjMIY1rbh8f0o1_500.jpg)
Obama honours officials killed in Libya who “embraced the American ideal”
Barack Obama marked the return of the bodies of four state department officials killed in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, including the ambassador to Libya, by saying their deaths must cause even the most hopeful to question a fundamental American belief in leaving the world a better place.
Source: Guardian
![Prince William, Kate to sue French magazine over topless photographs
French magazine ‘Closer’ unleashed a new media tornado on Britain’s royal family with a five-page splash of photos showing the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless in the south of France.
‘Closer’, a weekly round-up of celebrity gossip, ran a dozen shots of the Duchess, Kate Middleton, as she slipped off her bikini top, relaxed on a sun lounger and at one point pulled down the back of her bikini bottoms as William rubbed sun cream on her.
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Under the headline “Oh my God!,” the photos show the couple — whose regal yet natural conduct since their April wedding has won them fans worldwide — soaking up the sun on the balcony of a 19th century hunting lodge, oblivious to lurking paparazzi.
The spread is a blow to Buckingham Palace as it tries to move on from a scandal over naked shots of Prince Harry that tarred an image bolstered by Kate and William’s wedding, the Queen’s 2012 Diamond Jubilee and her Olympic Games appearance.
While ‘Closer’ defended its decision to publish the photographs, a royal spokesperson called it a grotesque move that had upset the royal couple, currently touring southeast Asia, and said Buckingham Palace was consulting lawyers.
“Their Royal Highnesses have been hugely saddened to learn that a French publication and a photographer have invaded their privacy in such a grotesque and totally unjustifiable manner,” a spokesperson for St James’ Palace said.
“Their Royal Highnesses had every expectation of privacy in the remote house. It is unthinkable that anyone should take such photographs, let alone publish them.”
Closer’s editor-in-chief, Laurence Pieau, described the photos as a “beautiful series” that showed a couple in love and were in no way degrading. She said the magazine had more intimate shots from the same series that it opted not to publish.
“There’s been an over-reaction to these photos. What we see is a young couple, who just got married, who are very much in love, who are splendid,” Pieau told French BFM television.
“She’s a real 21st Century princess,” she added: “It’s a young woman who is topless, the same as you can see on any beach in France or around the world”.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_macoijN94I1rbh8f0o1_500.jpg)
Prince William, Kate to sue French magazine over topless photographs
French magazine ‘Closer’ unleashed a new media tornado on Britain’s royal family with a five-page splash of photos showing the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless in the south of France.
‘Closer’, a weekly round-up of celebrity gossip, ran a dozen shots of the Duchess, Kate Middleton, as she slipped off her bikini top, relaxed on a sun lounger and at one point pulled down the back of her bikini bottoms as William rubbed sun cream on her.
Source: montrealgazette.com
Anonymous’ spokesman Barrett Brown raided by FBI during Tinychat session (VIDEO)
The self-proclaimed “face” of the hacktivst group ‘Anonymous,’ Barrett Brown, was arrested in Dallas overnight, according to Dallas Sheriff spokeswoman, Carmen Castro. He was later transported to an “undisclosed FBI facility,” she added.
Fed undertakes QE3 with $40 billion in M-BS purchases a month
The Federal Reserve said it will expand its holdings of long-term securities with open-ended purchases of $40 billion of mortgage debt a month in a third round of quantitative easing as it seeks to boost growth and reduce unemployment.
Source:bloomberg.com
