Foreign Policy Challenges Will Continue in 2014

WHITE HOUSE — 2013 was a challenging year for President Barack Obama in foreign policy.

Obama had his hands full in 2013 -- from controversy over his response to Syrian chemical weapons attacks, to a groundbreaking telephone call with Iran's new president and negotiations for a nuclear deal.

He had a summit with China's leader, visited Africa, and paid tribute to the late Nelson Mandela.

But he was weighed down by revelations of U.S. electronic eavesdropping, which caused tensions with key allies.

Obama attended the G20 summit in Russia, but canceled a formal meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

In his U.N. speech in September, he recognized what he called hostility toward America's global engagement, but said disengagement would be a mistake.

"I believe America must remain engaged for our own security.  But I also believe the world is better for it," said Obama.

Daniel Serwer, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says in Syria Obama won a deal to remove chemical weapons without military action -- but more is at stake.

"There is a growing domination of the opposition by extremists who would pose a very serious problem for us if the Bashar al-Assad regime is ever to fall, and you've got the neighbors increasingly shaky, the state structure -- Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon all at risk," said Serwer.

Whether Obama can remain focused on foreign policy is questionable, says Heather Conley at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Between the NSA scandal, health care, a government shutdown, many world leaders are wondering if President Obama can domestically overcome challenges even to focus on the challenges in the international arena," she said.

In 2014, the pace of the U.S. and NATO drawdown from Afghanistan will accelerate.

Conley says Americans and the world will be looking to Obama to clarify the accomplishments and costs of the long and bloody conflict.

"That delicate balance of what we were striving for and the cost that we bore has to be a very delicate conversation domestically and, I think as well, internationally," said Conley.

A recent Pew Research poll showed declining support for global engagement among Americans, a challenge to Obama's belief in a U.S. role.

"Somehow he is blamed for what is seen as the global decline of American influence," said Serwer. "I have got to tell you that global decline is not so apparent when you ask the people abroad.  There are lots and lots of countries where American influence is still very high."

2014 will bring more challenges as Iran nuclear negotiations continue, a U.N.-sponsored Syrian peace conference is set for January and Washington deals with its uncertain relationships with Afghanistan and Pakistan, China and Russia.

US Plane Hit in South Sudan, Americans Wounded

The U.S. military says unidentified gunmen have opened fire on at least one U.S. military plane involved in a rescue mission in South Sudan.
The U.S. Africa Command says four U.S. service members were wounded during the incident on Saturday, which took place as the U.S. was trying to evacuate Americans from Bor, a city recently overrun by rebels.
In a statement, the military says it aborted the mission after the plane came under fire and diverted the aircraft to an airfield outside South Sudan.
Bor has been the scene of some of South Sudan's worst fighting during the past week.
The violence erupted after President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, accused former vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer, of attempting a coup. The Juba government says more than 500 people have been killed, and the unrest has forced tens of thousands of people to flee from their homes.
There are reports of fresh fighting in some regions on Saturday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says he is sending a special envoy to South Sudan to encourage talks between opposing factions. Ambassador Donald Booth is heading to the region as soon as possible.
U.N. Security Council president Gerard Araud said Friday that South Sudan's President Kiir and former vice president Machar have agreed to "unconditional dialogue" despite their recent history of bitter recriminations. Mediators from East African countries met with Mr. Kiir Friday in what they called productive talks, but what form the Kiir-Machar "dialogue" will take is unclear.
On Friday, the U.N. said at least 11 civilians and two peacekeepers had been killed in an attack a day earlier on  a U.N. base in the town of Akobo.
The U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) says the peacekeepers and civilians were shot after about 2,000 armed youth, believed to be ethnic Nuers, surrounded the base and opened fire on members of the Dinka ethnic group taking shelter at the U.N. compound.
About 35,000 civilians are believed to have fled to U.N. compounds since the latest unrest began.

Thai Opposition to Boycott Election

Thailand's main opposition Democrat Party has announced that it will boycott February's general election.

The party's leader, former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, announced the boycott Saturday after a meeting of party executives. He said the decision was made to try to ensure political reforms are implemented.

Street protesters have been demanding for weeks that caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra step down ahead of the February 2 elections and hand over the government to an unelected "people's council."

Yingluck dissolved parliament on December 9 and called the snap poll in an attempt to defuse tensions, but opposition against her remains strong and a mass rally is due to take place in Bangkok Sunday.

Prince Harry reaches South Pole

LONDON: Prince Harry has become the first British royal to reach the South Pole after a three-week charity trek with injured military veterans from Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia.
Harry and the 12 servicemen and women reached the globe's most southerly point at 1200 GMT following a 200-mile journey across Antarctica, organisers Walking With The Wounded said.
"It's an amazing feeling, it really is," Harry, 29, said in a statement issued by Walking With the Wounded after the group reached the pole.
The fourth-in-line to the throne added: "What an amazing journey for every single one of them. I'm so proud, I'm so chuffed and I'm so privileged to be here with all these guys and girls.
"I think we'll be having a few whiskies tonight and then everyone's looking forward to getting home."
The expedition was initially conceived as a race but it was abandoned due to concerns about the safety of the participants, some of whom lost limbs fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Prince Harry, patron of Team UK in the South Pole Allied …
Prince Harry, patron of Team UK in the South Pole Allied Challenge 2013 expedition, makes final prep …
The teams decided to continue their trek, however, dragging 70-kilogramme sleds through the bitter cold and high winds.
Harry, who serves as an army helicopter pilot, joked earlier this week about the expected arrival date of Friday 13th, which he said was "unlucky for some, lucky for us".
The veterans have endured temperatures as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius (minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit) and wind speeds of around 50 miles per hour.
The trek has been organised by Walking With The Wounded, a charity which raises funds to retrain injured troops and help them find new careers outside the military.
Harry joined the charity for part of a trek to the North Pole in 2011, but had to come home early to be best man at his brother Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton.
View gallery
Prince Harry (L) and his fellow adventurers reach the …
Prince Harry (L) and his fellow adventurers reach the South Pole in Antartica on December 13, 2013, …
While Queen Elizabeth's grandson is the first royal to reach the South Pole, Britain's monarchy has a number of links to the frozen continent.
Prince Philip crossed the Antarctic circle in 1957 on board the now-retired royal yacht Britannia while visiting a memorial cross to polar explorer Ernest Shackleton on the remote Atlantic island of South Georgia.
Harry's aunt Princess Anne has twice visited Antarctica, most recently in 2007.
The queen herself had a huge chunk of Antarctica named after her in a gift from the government to mark her diamond jubilee in 2012.
Queen Elizabeth Land is around 169,000 square miles in size, making up just under a third of British Antarctic Territory. (AFP)

Mandela's state funeral underway

QUNU: A 21-gun salute and full honour guard escorted the coffin of Nelson Mandela as his state funeral got underway Sunday in the rolling hills of his rural boyhood home.
A Xhosa hymn, "Fulfill Your Promise", sounded the start of the ceremony, organised to reflect the traditions of his tribe and the pride of the country he transformed as dissident and president.
The specially constructed marquee venue held 4,500 people, with pride of place going to Mandela´s family, including his widow Graca Machel and ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Top government officials and foreign dignitaries and celebrities, ranging from Britain´s Prince Charles to US talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, were also in attendance.
Mandela´s flag-draped casket was brought to the ceremony on a gun carriage as the 21-gun salute rang out over the surrounding hills of Eastern Cape province.
The funeral closes the final chapter on a towering public figure whose courage and moral fortitude turned him into a global symbol of freedom and hope. And it ends 10 days of national mourning during which hundreds of thousands of South Africans turned out in torrential rain and searing sunshine to grieve, remember and celebrate the life of their first elected black leader.
ber and celebrate the life of their first elected black leader.
The formal section of the state funeral was to last two hours and was broadcast around the world. The public was shut out of the interment itself, which the family has insisted will be a private affair with close friends.
The graveyard sits on the sprawling family estate Mandela built in Qunu after his release from prison in 1990."It was in that village that I spent some of the happiest years of my boyhood and whence I trace my earliest memories," he wrote in his autobiography.
Overseen by male members of his clan, the burial will include the slaughter of an ox -- a ritual performed through various milestones of a person´s life under the clan´s traditions. During the ceremony, Mandela will be referred to as Dalibhunga -- the name given to him at the age of 16 after undergoing the initiation to adulthood.
Mourners will wear traditional Xhosa regalia, with blue and white beaded headgear and necklaces. Xhosa speakers are divided into several groups, including the Thembu people, of which Mandela is a member.
Although Mandela never publicly declared his religious denomination, his family comes from a Methodist background.
Funeral plans were briefly overshadowed by an outcry after Mandela´s old friend and fellow Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu said he had not been invited. In the end Tutu did
e Desmond Tutu said he had not been invited. In the end Tutu did attend, and the government tried to brush off the confusion as a misunderstanding. Tutu -- who baptised South Africa the "Rainbow Nation" -- has been a persistent critic of the government of President Jacob Zuma and has also spoken out against infighting in Mandela´s family.
Over the years, the archbishop emeritus has presided over the funerals of some of the anti-apartheid movement´s leading lights, including Steve Biko, Chris Hani and Walter Sisulu.
While Mandela had been critically ill for months, the announcement of his death on December 5 was still sent a spasm through a country struggling to carry forward his vision of a harmonious multi-racial democracy of shared prosperity. For the rest of the world, it marked the loss of that rarest of world leaders who are viewed with near universal respect and admiration.
Gushing tributes poured in from every corner of the globe, although Mandela himself had always stressed he was part of a communal leadership and resisted any move towards his public canonisation -- posthumous or otherwise.
"He is finally coming home to rest, I can´t even begin to describe the feeling I have inside," said 31-year-old Bongani Zibi, a mourner in Qunu, as the funeral cortege carrying Mandela´s casket arrived on Saturday. "Part of me is sad but I´m also happy that he has found peace.

Obama-Castro Handshake Draws Attention at Mandela Tribute

Tuesday's memorial service for Nelson Mandela generated some informal diplomacy and political controversy, alongside the praise for the late South African president.

In a moment caught by television cameras, U.S. President Barack Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro as he walked to the podium.

The handshake was notable because the United States and Cuba have not had diplomatic relations since 1961, at the height of the Cold War, and the U.S. maintains a trade embargo on Cuba.  Relations have begun to thaw in recent years.

U.S. officials say the handshake was not pre-planned.  But they say the two leaders did not have a substantive discussion, they only exchanged greetings.  White House aides say the United States still has "grave concerns" about Cuba's human rights situation.

Obama also exchanged greetings with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, but U.S. officials say Obama did not see the memorial service as a "venue to do business."

The two leaders have been debating an agreement of a continued U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw in 2014.

The United States says Karzai must sign the pact by the end of this year or there will be no choice but to withdraw all American troops after 2014.

Obama is popular in South Africa, and thousands of people in the stadium cheered when his image appeared on the giant screen overlooking the field.

In contrast, South African President Jacob Zuma was booed each time his image was shown on the screen.  Many South Africans have been angered by recent accusations that Zuma spent $200 million in taxpayer money to renovate his private home.

In all, more than 70 heads of state and government attended the ceremony, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and India's President Pranab Mukherjee.

Harry? Hairy! Daniel Radcliffe sports long locks for next role

The pixie cut is so last summer. Former "Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe is turning to hair extensions to make new movie magic.

The normally clean-cut British actor, 24, turned up with convincingly long locks for an episode of the "Graham Norton Show" as well as at a London screening of his film "Kill Your Darlings."

The hair is actually for the part of Igor, the assistant with the hunched back, in the coming adaptation of "Frankenstein." Thankfully, there was no mention of Radcliffe's posture taking a hit for the role.

On the "Norton" show, Radcliffe shared the couch with British food writer Mary Berry, who couldn't resist brushing the hair out of Radcliffe's face and attempting to tuck it behind his ear. "It's very soft, isn't it?" Berry said.

"It's real, dead human being's hair," Radcliffe said. When Berry asked if it was his, Radcliffe said, "No, it's from, I assume, a dead person or a person that donated their hair." Berry chose to conclude that donation from a living person who had his or her hair cut was a more appealing option.

"It was found on a floor," Norton chimed in.

But it does seem fitting, for a role in "Frankenstein," that the appearance of one of the lead characters would be manipulated using something from a cadaver.

Regardless of the origin of Radcliffe's extensions, it's worth asking whether Dirty Hairy is a look you're fond of. Cast your vote in the attached survey.

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US courts asked to recognize chimps as people

NEW YORK: Walking, talking chimpanzees may be TV comedy gold but now three courts in New York are being asked to recognize four chimps as "legal persons" with fundamental rights.
The move would allow the animals to be released into sanctuaries where they could live out the reminder of their days in freedom, says the Nonhuman Rights Project behind the initiative.
On Monday it petitioned a court in Fulton County Court, New York State, in the name of
Tommy, a chimpanzee held captive in a cage at a used trailer lot in nearby Gloversville. On Tuesday it did the same for Kiko, a 26-year-old chimpanzee who is deaf and living in a private home in Niagara Falls.
The group will Thursday lodge a similar petition on behalf of Hercules and Leo, who are owned by a research center and used in locomotion experiments on Long Island.
"The lawsuits ask the judge to grant the chimpanzees the right to bodily liberty and to order that they be moved to a sanctuary," the organization said in a statement.There the animals can live out their days in an environment as close to the wild as is possible in North America, it added.The challenge is based on the principle of habeas corpus, which the
petitioners said was used in New York and allowed slaves to challenge their status and establish their right to freedom.
Under habeas corpus, a person being held captive can petition a judge to have the captors explain why they think they have the right to hold that person. "Our legal petitions and memoranda, along with affidavits from some of the world´s most respected scientists, lay out a clear case as to why these cognitively complex, autonomous beings have the basic legal right to not be imprisoned," the statement added.
The courts can decide whether or not to take up the petitions but if they refuse the organization has the right of appeal. The Nonhuman Rights Project works to change the common law status of at least some animals to "persons" who possess fundamental rights
such as bodily integrity and bodily liberty.
The organization´s web site features what it calls bios of the four chimps at the center of the lawsuit.It said that the day its investigators visited the chimp named Tommy, the temperature in the shed was about 40 degrees below what it would be in his native land. "The only company he had was a TV that was left on for him at the other side of the shed," the organization said.
As for the one called Kiko, the Nonhuman Rights Project said he is partially or totally deaf because of abuse he suffered while on the set of a Tarzan movie before being acquired by the current owners. "He suffers from an inner ear condition that requires him to take anti-motion sickness medication from time to time especially during changes in barometric pressure," the group´s web site says.

Italian town lights “world’s biggest Christmas tree

GUBBIO: A picturesque medieval town in northern Italy on Saturday turned on a giant light installation known as the "World´s Biggest Christmas Tree."
Hundreds of onlookers, many of them delighted children, watched as a priest used a tablet computer to switch on the dazzling display on a hill above the town of Gubbio in the Umbria region.
The "tree" is made up of some 1,000 multi-coloured lights arranged across a hillside above Gubbio and stretches to a height of 750 metres (2,461 feet) and a maximum width of 450 metres.
The shooting star at the top of the hill is made up of 250 lights and covers an area of more than 1,000 square metres (10,760 square feet).
The town in the Umbria region in northern Italy, which also has historical links to Saint Francis of Assisi, began the installation in 1981. (AFP)

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