AFGHANISTAN: Newly re-elected Afghan President Hamid Karzai has vowed his government
will work with all of the country's people while eliminting rampant
corruption.
Mr. Karzai said in his victory speech Tuesday in Kabul that his new
administration will be a "mirror of Afghanistan" that will reflect upon
the entire Afghan community. He pledged to remove what he called the
"stain of corruption" from the Afghan government.
Mr. Karzai added that the true winner of the presidential election was
not just one person, but all the people of Afghanistan who participated
in the election process.
NOKOR - NUCLEAR: North Korea says it has completed reprocessing spent fuel rods which will allow it to make more fuel for nuclear weapons.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency says the country has
finished processing 8,000 spent fuel rods that experts say could give
the communist nation enough plutonium to make at least one atomic bomb.
The announcement comes just one day after North Korea's foreign
ministry pressed the United States to agree to direct talks. The North
warned that if the U.S. is not ready to sit at the negotiating table,
it will go its own way.
BURMA - US: Two senior U.S. envoys have begun holding talks in Burma with the
country's military leaders, the highest level of contact between the
two countries in more than a decade.
American Embassy officials in Burma say Assistant Secretary of State
Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, and his deputy
(Scot Marceil) met Tuesday with Prime Minister Thein Sein in the
country's administrative capital, Naypyidaw.
In addition to meeting with the country's military leaders during the
visit, the envoys are expected to meet with opposition leaders as well,
including detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
CHINA UNREST: Police in China's far west Xinjiang region have begun a new manhunt for fugitives wanted in connection with deadly ethnic violence in July. The Xinjiang public security ministry said in a faxed statement Tuesday that the Strike Hard campaign will run through the end of the year and will cover all of the region, with police on high alert for terror plots. The statement also ordered security forces to continue the search for riot suspects. Violence erupted in the regional capital of Urumqi on July 5, after Uighurs held a peaceful protest in Xinjiang against the deaths of two Uighur factory workers who died in a brawl with Han Chinese in southern China's Guangdong province.
IRAN NUCLEAR: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says there will be no change to the international offer to Iran to have its low-grade uranium processed and enriched abroad. Clinton told reporters Monday in Marrakech, Morocco, that Iran has a pivotal choice to make if it does not want to face worldwide isolation, which would follow refusal of the U.N.-backed nuclear fuel deal. Hours earlier, Iran said it wants to hold more talks on the plan, even though world powers are demanding a quick response from Tehran to the proposal.
GERMANY - US: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in Washington to mark the 20th
anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, is speaking (later) Tuesday
to a joint meeting of both houses of the U.S. Congress. She will be the
first German leader to address the House or Senate since Konrad
Adenauer in 1957. Ms. Merkel says the chance to speak to the American
lawmakers is a
great honor and an opportunity to thank the United States for its
support for German unification after the wall came down (on November 9)
in 1989. The chancellor also will meet with President Barack Obama at
the White House (Tuesday).
FIJI - AUSTRALIA - NEW ZEALAND: Fiji's military leader has ordered the envoys from Australia and New Zealand to leave the Pacific island nation, accusing them of interference with the country's internal affairs. Commodore Frank Bainimarama, Fiji's prime minister, said Tuesday he ordered the expulsions because Australia and New Zealand interfered with Fiji's judiciary and the travel of new judges from Sri Lanka. Australia and New Zealand have banned any official of the Fiji government from traveling through their countries.
ASIA STORM: Vietnamese disaster officials say tropical storm Mirinae killed four
people and left at least two missing after slamming into the coast of
Vietnam.
Disaster officials say Mirinae killed at least three people in the
south-central province of Phu Yen, and one person in neighboring Binh
Dinh province after drenching the region with heavy rain on Monday.
Mirinae later weakened into a tropical depression as it moved further inland toward Cambodia.
Mirinae battered the central Philippines, making landfall over the
region on Friday as a typhoon. Authorities say at least 19 people were
killed, mostly from drowning.
Listen to our World News for details.
