. . .Headlines . . .

" White House Summit Meeting With European Leaders On Debt Crisis" . . . . .

" Egyptians Swarm To The Polls" . . . . .

" Odyssey Of Lana Peters, Stalin's Daughter, Comes To An End" . . . . .

. . .Today's Story . . .

• Current Events About Global Economy
  White House Summit Meeting With European Leaders On Debt Crisis (*Washington Post*) European Union leaders gathered in Washington for a summit meeting with President Obama on Monday amid new warnings about the severity of Europe’s debt crisis.

  In reports issued Monday, Moody’s Investors Service said all of Europe’s sovereign ratings are being threatened by the “rapid escalation” of the crisis, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that the region faces the prospect of further massive economic disruption and said policymakers should be “prepared to face the worst.”

  Obama met at the White House with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The White House said the talks, which continued over lunch, would cover a broad range of issues, including the global economy. Among those attending from the U.S. side were Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

  With the global economy in “a new and difficult phase,” the European Union and the United States “are committed to working together to reinvigorate economic growth, create jobs, and ensure financial stability,” the two sides said in a joint statement at the end of the summit.

  “We will do so by taking actions that address near-term growth concerns, as well as fiscal and financial vulnerabilities, and that strengthen the foundations of long-lasting and balanced growth,” the statement said. “In that regard, the United States welcomes the E.U.’s actions and determination to take all necessary steps to ensure the euro area’s financial stability and resolve the crisis. The E.U. looks forward to U.S. action on medium term fiscal consolidation.”
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• Current Events In Egypt
  Egyptians Swarm To The Polls (*Washington Post*) Egyptians voted in droves Monday, expressing hope that ballots cast in the first election since the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak would mark the dawn of democratic rule after a popular revolt this month that left hundreds dead and roiled regional politics.

  Voters and party officials reported a few snags, including polling stations that opened late and violations of a ban on campaigning that targets voters in line. But the early hours of voting appeared to surpass expectations, coming just days after renewed demonstrations against the country’s interim military leaders.

  “I know these are going to be fair elections,” first-time voter Tamer Gamal, 32, said as he stood in a long line in the working-class district of Shubra in Cairo. “We feel that the Egyptian vote now has weight.”

  The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party appeared to be by far the most organized, deploying representatives to nearly all polling stations and mobilizing voters in all the districts where voting took place.

  The historic voting Monday marked the start of a three-month process to form what Egyptians hope will be the first legitimately elected parliament in the country’s history. Until Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in February, his National Democratic Party monopolized power and held rigged elections to give the country’s autocratic system a veneer of democracy.
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• Current Events In Iraq
  Iraqis Prepare To Have Their Country Back (*Washington Post*) They do know what they feel. Their country was turned upside down by the American-led invasion in 2003, and now Iraq’s young — their worldview indelibly shaped by a U.S. military presence that ends next month — are preparing to inherit a nation that still struggles to right itself.

  Some young Iraqis say they are glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein but feel less safe — and therefore less free — than before 2003, a sentiment reflected in dozens of interviews in eight provinces.

  They view their government as a pseudo-regime that deprives them of basic rights, and they worry that their peers are being lured into the ethnic, sectarian and partisan traps of their elders. They think the world is fixating on revolutions in other Arab countries while ignoring a rotting democracy in Baghdad and their generation’s struggle to live the freedom that was promised to them 8 1/2 years ago.

  “Our generation has seen enough,” said Baghdad resident Mustafa Hamza el-Ebadi, 21, who will graduate this spring with a degree in communication and engineering and wants to move to the United States. “When we were kids, there were economic sanctions. When we were teenagers, there were bodies in the street. And now there is no space to live.”
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• Current News About An Historic Figure
  Odyssey Of Lana Peters, Stalin's Daughter, Comes To An End (*NY TIMES*) At her birth, on Feb. 28, 1926, she was named Svetlana Stalina, the only daughter and last surviving child of the brutal Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin. After he died in 1953, she took her mother’s last name, Alliluyeva. In 1970, after her defection and an American marriage, she became and remained Lana Peters.

  Ms. Peters died of colon cancer on Nov. 22 in Richland County, Wis., the county’s corporation counsel, Benjamin Southwick, said on Monday.

  Her death, like the last years of her life, occurred away from public view. There were hints of it online and in Richland Center, the Wisconsin town in which she lived, though a local funeral home said to be handling the burial would not confirm the death. A county official in Wisconsin thought she might have died several months ago. Phone calls seeking information from a surviving daughter, Olga Peters, who now goes by the name Chrese Evans, were rebuffed, as were efforts to speak to her in person in Portland, Ore., where she lives and works.

  Ms. Peters’s initial prominence came only from being Stalin’s daughter, a distinction that fed public curiosity about her life across three continents and many decades. She said she hated her past and felt like a slave to extraordinary circumstances. Yet she drew on that past, and the infamous Stalin name, in writing two best-selling autobiographies.
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• Current Events In Jordan
  King Of Jordan Invites President Of Israel To Amman (*NY TIMES*) JERUSALEM — King Abdullah II of Jordan played host on Monday to Shimon Peres, the president of Israel, in an effort to make progress on the stubborn Palestinian question at a time of regional diplomatic uncertainty and fragmentation.

  Last week, the king made his first visit in a decade to the West Bank to see Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, and is to travel next week to Washington.

  As postrevolutionary Egypt pulls back from its longstanding role as the bridge between Israel and the Arab world, Jordan sees an opportunity and is using these public visits to make that clear.

  A palace statement said that the king and Mr. Peres “addressed ways of surmounting the obstacles that impede the revival of peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis on the basis of the two-state vision.”

  An aide to Mr. Peres said the president thought that Jordan would not want to publicize the visit, so the Israelis kept it quiet in advance. They were surprised — and pleased — when the Jordanians made it public.
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The Friendly Universe - Law of Attraction in Action 

WorldsWays World Story with Current Events in the World

"Adventures In Democracy; Deciding Who Rules - The People Or The Government "
by Jerry Waxman

Some elements of democracy seem self-contradictory. It is supposed to be rule by majority, but also representative of minorities. It is supposed to be government by the people, but those who hold elected office are empowered to make decisions that go against the people's consensus.

It remains to be seen if Morocco's recent elections and new democratic system are actual or a mere farce. The people voted, but the king still holds certain powers. Then there is the question of how effective a prime minister can be under the new system. Morocco's next prime minister will come from a religious Islamic party that has advocated stricter observance of Islamic law than Morocco has sustained up to now. The ruling party also received less than 25% of the vote.

So far the recent elections in Morocco seem to have gone peacefully. Not so in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the DRC loyalists of different parties have declared war on each other before elections have even been held. Despite the violence, the DRC is expected to go ahead with its poll. Which immediately brings into question the validity of that poll. If people are afraid to vote their minds or afraid to vote, period, what good is having an election? Furthermore, if the election itself is prone to lead to more violence, is it really in the people's interest to vote?

Few places are as demonstrative of the contradictory nature of democracy as current-day Egypt. Once the pinnacle of the Arab Spring, Egypt is back in the headlines because of its massive and often violent protests. This time the protests are against the same military that the same people supported while Mubarrak was still in power. As an interim government, the military siphoned much of the political power to itself. Meanwhilehe Muslim Brotherhood, now free to express itself, wants to have a government that more strictly follows Islamic law - which removes, somewhat, people's rights to expression.

While Africa and the Middle East are toying with democratic principles, it is actually in the U.S. that principles of democracy are most challenged. In 2008 the electorate clearly chose whom they want to preside over U.S. affairs. They chose a member of the Democratic party. Members of the Republican party have been hard at work, ever since, at refusing to accept the voters' decision. In many states, they have been hard at work to concoct schemes and laws to prevent voters from voting. In Africa , we see violence where we see an election. In America, the lawmakers and the courts unflinchingly remove people's powers. Different methods, same results.

. . .Headlines . . .

" Arab League Issues Sanctions On Syria" . . . . .

" India And China Face Frictions" . . . . .

" Moroccans Choose Religious Islamic Party" . . . . .

. . .Today's Story . . .

• Science Current Events In New York
  Lady Bug Returns To NY After 29 Years (*NY TIMES*) It is not just any bug, but the native nine-spotted ladybug. And its reappearance is something of a relief, because it is the official New York State insect, even though the last recorded sighting of it in New York was 29 years ago.

  Its absence had not gone completely unnoticed. There was a moment in 2006 when the State Assembly, realizing that the state insect had left the state, tried to replace it with a different species of ladybug, an attempt that fortunately fell victim to legislative inaction.

  And now — after all these years — the state insect has been found. Like so many other New Yorkers, it was seen summering in Amagansett.

  Peter Priolo, a volunteer participant in an effort called the Lost Ladybug Project, found the ladybug on July 30 in a patch of sunflowers during a group search he had organized.

  “I didn’t realize it was a nine-spotted when I found it,” Mr. Priolo said. He was on his way to do an end-of-the-day ladybug tally, so, he said, “I put it in my jar and hurried back to meet with everybody.”
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• Current Events In India and China
  India And China Face Frictions (*Washington Post*) It was billed as a new assertiveness, when India’s usually meek Prime Minister Manmohan Singh supposedly looked his Chinese counterpart in the eye at a summit in Bali last weekend and defended his country’s “commercial” right to explore for oil and gas in the South China Sea.

  But it was also a sign of rising frictions between India and China, and of what experts see as a dangerous new game between the world’s most populous nations.

  Threatened by China’s rapidly growing ties with its South Asian neighbors, India is increasingly trying to penetrate Beijing’s traditional sphere of influence, and the mutual irritations are beginning to show.

  Coming just after India and Vietnam agreed to jointly explore two ocean blocks just off the fiercely contested Spratly Islands, Singh’s stance in Bali prompted a frosty response from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

  “We don’t hope to see outside forces involved in the South China Sea dispute and do not want to see foreign companies engage in activities that will undermine China’s sovereignty and rights and interests,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Weimin told reporters in Beijing.
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• Current Events About Iran
  U.S. Officials Try To Undo Terrorist Label For Iranian Opposition Group (*NY TIMES*) At a time of partisan gridlock in the capital, one obscure cause has drawn a stellar list of supporters from both parties and the last two administrations, including a dozen former top national security officials.

  That alone would be unusual. What makes it astonishing is the object of their attention: a fringe Iranian opposition group, long an ally of Saddam Hussein, that is designated as a terrorist organization under United States law and described by State Department officials as a repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.

  The extraordinary lobbying effort to reverse the terrorist designation of the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, has won the support of two former C.I.A. directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; big-name Republicans like the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Democrats like the former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey, who argued unsuccessfully for ending the terrorist label while in office.

  The American advocates have been well paid, hired through their speaking agencies and collecting fees of $10,000 to $50,000 for speeches on behalf of the Iranian group. Some have been flown to Paris, Berlin and Brussels for appearances.

  But they insist that their motive is humanitarian — to protect and resettle about 3,400 members of the group, known as the M.E.K., now confined in a camp in Iraq. They say the terrorist label, which dates to 1997 and then reflected decades of violence that included the killing of some Americans in the 1970s, is now outdated, unjustified and dangerous.

  
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• Current News About Syria
  Arab League Issues Sanctions On Syria (*NY TIMES*) The Arab League approved tough economic sanctions against Syria on Sunday to press it to end its violent crackdown against antigovernment protesters, an unprecedented step against an Arab country.

  The sanctions —including a travel ban against Syrian officials and politicians, a halt to all dealings with the Syrian central bank and the cessation of Arab-financed projects in Syria — will be another blow to the Syrian economy, which is already suffering from sanctions by the European Union and the United States.

  The Arab League, meeting outside Cairo, approved the sanctions after Syria said it would not admit Arab civilian and military observers to oversee a peace agreement intended to end the bloodshed.

  Syria had accepted the peace agreement on Nov. 2, promising to to end a military crackdown that, according to the United Nations, has killed more than 3,500 people since March. But the violence has continued unabated, and the monitors were proposed as a last-ditch effort to save the plan and give Syria another opportunity to comply.
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• Current Events In Morocco
  Moroccans Choose Religious Islamic Party (*BBC NEWS*) Morocco's moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) has won parliamentary elections, say officials.

  According to provisional results, the PJD won 80 seats in the 395-seat assembly, Interior Minister Taib Cherkaoui told a news conference.

  That would make it the largest party and give it the right to lead a government.

  The poll is part of reforms which King Mohamed VI hopes will defuse protests prompted by the Arab Spring.

  "We thank the Moroccans who voted for the PJD and we can only be satisfied," PJD leader Abdelilah Benkirane told the AFP news agency.

  Mr Benkirane had earlier predicted his party would win 90-100 seats.

  Under a new constitution adopted in July, King Mohamed VI must now appoint the prime minister from the party which wins the most seats, rather than naming whomever he pleases.
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The Friendly Universe - Law of Attraction in Action