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Summary: U.S./Top News The US embassy in Nicaragua threatened economic sanctions if Nicaraguans elect frontrunner and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in Sunday's presidential elections, Democracy Now reports.
A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the US Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, the New York Times reports.
US and UK forces have continued to use depleted uranium weapons despite warnings they pose a cancer risk, the BBC reports.
Iran Iran will offer cash incentives to travel agencies to encourage Western tourists to visit the country, giving a premium for Americans, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Iran announced Wednesday it would be holding military maneuvers in the Gulf this week, days after U.S.-led navies held exercises in the Gulf, Iranian state television reported.
Russia said Tuesday it believed Iran's nuclear program was peaceful, and a political dialogue, not sanctions, must be used in talks with Iran, Reuters reports.
Iraq American soldiers lifted a near siege of Baghdad's largest Shiite enclave Tuesday, following the orders of an Iraqi government whose assertion of sovereignty had Shiites celebrating in the streets, the Washington Post reports.
About two-thirds of the deaths among US troops in Iraq in October occurred outside Baghdad, the New York Times reports.
Lebanon Hezbollah's leader said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that "serious negotiations" were under way over the release of two Israeli soldiers, the New York Times reports. The interview appeared intended to help shore up Hezbollah's standing with the public amid a power struggle over control of the government.
The US has said there is "mounting evidence" that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are planning to topple the Lebanese government. The White House statement casts doubt on any willingness by the Bush administration to consider Syria and Iran as potential partners over the future of Iraq, BBC reports.
Pakistan Faced with protests across the country, President Musharraf Tuesday defended a military strike that killed 80 people at a religious school, and insisted that the dead were militants undergoing terrorist training. General Musharraf's claim came amid protests across the political spectrum, the New York Times reports.
Turkey A Turkish court has acquitted a 92-year-old academic of charges of insulting Muslim women and inciting religious hatred, BBC reports. The archaeologist, an expert in the ancient Sumerian civilisation, was prosecuted over a book in which she linked the wearing of headscarves with ancient Sumerian sexual rites.
Afghanistan The lives of Afghanistan's women have changed little five years after the fall of the Taliban, according to a report by the women's rights group Womankind Worldwide, based in the UK. Honor killings are still widespread. Only 5 per cent of girls of secondary school age are enrolled. Many abuses take place in the north and west, where the Taliban are not active, the Independent reports.
Venezeuela Executives at Sequoia Voting Systems said they had asked for a U.S. government investigation "to put to rest baseless but persistent rumors" about the parent company's ties to Venezuelan President Chavez.
Nicaragua Former revolutionary Daniel Ortega could emerge from 16 years in opposition to become Nicaragua's president on Sunday, helped by the weak record of pro-Washington governments, Reuters reports. Opinion polls have Ortega well in the lead, but the Bush Administration hopes center-right former banker Eduardo Montealegre will come in second, stave off a first-round defeat and beat Ortega in a runoff.
Contents: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/newsroom/blog/
- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org