Just when we were worried that no one would be keeping their eyes on Russia once Sarah Palin left the governor's office in Alaska, Vice President Joe Biden let us know that he was up to the job. Biden capped off his visit last week to Ukraine and Georgia where his public remarks had already managed to irk the Russians by giving an end of the week interview to the Wall Street Journal in which the vice president seemed intent on talking down to the Russians with a mix of tough love and belittlement. Earlier this July, Obama had gone to Moscow turning his metaphor of pressing the "re-start" button into at least a few tangible results. By the time Biden wrapped his visit up with the interview in the Wall Street Journal, he seemed to have pushed the erase button on the last three weeks of U.S.-Russian diplomacy. It wasn't so much what the vice president said but the way in which he said it. His tone was patronizing.
An opinion poll shows almost three-quarters of Greek Cypriots believe slow-moving talks with breakaway Turkish Cypriots will not lead to a deal reunifying the ethnically divided island in the next year. The GNORA/RAI poll published Sunday in Phileleftheros newspaper also showed that 67 percent of respondents reject Turkey's full European Union membership. Some 71 percent believe EU-member Cyprus should block Turkey's EU course if it doesn't open ports and airports to Cypriot traffic. Cyprus was split in 1974 when Turkey invaded in response to a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Reunification talks resumed in September, but little tangible progress has been made.
The U.S. Navy is warning of increased pirate activity off the coast of Somalia due to the advent of weather more favorable to the sea-borne criminals. The Navy says high seas in the Gulf of Aden had resulted in fewer attacks in recent weeks. With the monsoon season ending in four to six weeks pirate activity is expected to increase, the Navy said in a statement Monday. The Navy advised mariners to use a designated corridor when transiting the Gulf of Aden. The corridor is patrolled by 30 warships, supported by aircraft from 16 nations. Somali pirates carried out hundreds of attacks this year. They currently hold around a dozen ships awaiting ransom payments.
Iceland cleared the first hurdle on the way to becoming a European Union member on Monday when EU foreign ministers agreed to pass its membership application on to the bloc's executive for a technical evaluation. The decision means that the European Commission will now analyse whether Iceland's laws are in line with EU legal standards. But it does not mean that the country is guaranteed a quick entry, even if it has already signed up to many EU rules as a member of the European Economic Area and Schengen border-free zone. Iceland applied for membership in Stockholm, current seat of the EU's rotating presidency, just four days ago. Its application comes as doubts are growing within the EU over the whole process of enlargement, with bilateral rows and internal problems jeopardizing the hopes of most other candidates.
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Justice Minister Barisa Colak says BiH will not extradite its citizens to other countries, regardless of the type of the arrest warrant involved. He was responding to his Serbian counterpart Snezana Malovic, who visited Interpol's headquarters in Lyon to ask for the reactivation of arrest warrants against 19 Bosniaks suspected of war crimes against Serbians in Sarajevo in 1992. Colak stressed that Malovic's move does not contribute to the resolution of pending issues between the two countries.
Islamist militants have attacked Nigerian police in two northern states, the Nigerian daily Tribune newspaper reported on Monday. So-called "Taliban" militants clashed with police in Nigeria's Borno state after at least 200 people were killed in clashes between Islamic militants and police on Sunday in neighbouring Bauchi state. The self-styled Taliban group clashed on Monday with security forces in Maiduguri, capital of neighbouring Borno State. People were also reported to be fleeing central Maiduguri. The militants in Bauchi, popularly called 'Boko Haram', are said to oppose anything western including western-style education. They accuse the state government of preventing them from publicly practising their religion or seeking converts. Islamic Sharia law is in place across northern Nigeria but there is no history of Al-Qaeda linked violence in the country. Nigeria's 140 million people are split almost equally between Muslims and Christians and the two groups generally live peacefully side by side, despite occasional outbreaks of communal violence.
Home in Chicago for the first time since his election to head the Orthodox Church in America, Metropolitan Archbishop Jonah reminded the faithful at Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral on Sunday that American converts like himself form the core of the denomination. Elected in December to lead the main branch of Orthodox Christianity in the U.S., the Chicago native became primate under a banner of reform. In his sermon Sunday, the metropolitan called for humility, responsibility and sacrifice on the part of church leaders to invigorate the church's mission and asked parishioners to pray that bishops could live up to those expectations. Bishops should have "no personal agenda, no desire for riches, nothing left of egocentrism," he told worshipers at Holy Trinity, the seat of the denomination's Midwest diocese. "I ask that you pray for me and other bishops that we may keep this in mind and serve in a more authentic way." Born James Paffhausen and raised on Chicago's Near North Side, Archbishop Jonah, 49, was originally baptized at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church. He discovered the Orthodox Christianity during college at the University of California at San Diego. while working in Russia as a doctoral candidate, he fell in love with the wholesale commitment of monasticism. He eventually established monasteries and missions in California and Hawaii. "I'd come to the realization that I really didn't care about pursuing a position of money and power," he said. "I was raised to be a corporate executive like my father and grandfather. I found it empty."