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Mediators try to keep Mideast efforts alive
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Published: November 9, 2008
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt -- Mideast mediators meet today in a bid to preserve U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks despite their looming failure to produce a deal by year's end.
With an agreement not in sight after nearly 12 months of negotiations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will press the two sides and fellow mediators to reaffirm their commitment to the peace process even after the end-of-the-Bush-administration deadline for a pact passes.
The mediators are expected to give their blessing to continuing the Annapolis process, which sets out a multi-pronged approach to achieving peace.
More than 20 reported dead in accident on nuclear sub
MOSCOW -- Russian news agencies are reporting that an accident aboard a nuclear-powered submarine has killed more than 20 people.
Interfax quotes Capt. Igor Dygalo, a spokesman for the Russian navy, as saying that the reactor is working normally and radiation levels are normal.
State-run RIA-Novosti quotes Dygalo as saying that a fire-extinguishing system went into operation in error yesterday aboard the submarine during tests in the Pacific Ocean.
Germans protest shipment of nuclear waste to site
BERLIN -- Almost 15,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators protested yesterday against a shipment of reprocessed nuclear waste being transported to a storage site in northern Germany, police said.
German police were working to free three demonstrators who had chained themselves to railway tracks near the western city of Woerth, preventing the shipment from crossing from France into Germany.
About 300 farmers used tractors to block the main road to the storage site in the town of Goerleben, where another 14,500 people protested.
Stolen U.N. vehicle sought; use as suicide bomb feared
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Authorities searched for a United Nations vehicle stolen from the Kabul airport yesterday, amid worries that militants could use the SUV as a car bomb or to take attackers close to sensitive sites.
U.N. personnel, Western security officials and Afghan police were looking for the white Toyota Land Cruiser with the U.N. agency's name painted in blue letters.
The main U.N. compound in Kabul is on the road to the presidential palace. The road is secured by a gate and armed guards, but U.N. vehicles are usually waved quickly through check points.
Rice meets with Russian on trying to ease tensions
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her Russian counterpart yesterday as they sought to ease escalating tensions in the waning weeks of the Bush administration.
In what may be one of her last such sessions with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as the chief U.S. diplomat, Rice met with Lavrov at her hotel in this Egyptian Red Sea resort for an 80-minute discussion.
Despite the length of the private meeting, there was no sign either side had budged on its position on the most contentious issues, notably missile defense, arms control and Russia's war with Georgia.
Israeli and Hamas forces trade fire on Gaza border
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The Israeli army and Hamas militants say that their forces traded fire on Gaza's border, testing a shaky truce in place since June.
The gunbattle between Israeli forces and Hamas gunmen took place yesterday morning on Gaza's eastern border.
The Israeli army says that its soldiers were detonating two bombs on the border fence when Hamas gunmen opened fire, prompting the exchange. There were no reports of casualties.
The gunbattle is the latest test to a five-month-old Egyptian-mediated truce between Israel and Palestinian militants.
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