I. USATODAY - Miners' rescue puts tourism spotlight on Chile
As millions of viewers across the globe watched the last of 33 trapped Chilean miners emerge from their subterranean prison into the glare of cameras on a cold desert night, Chile is hoping for a boost from its own ecstatic turn in the media spotlight. "It would be difficult to put a price on how much the good news exposure will be a boost to Chilean business abroad, tourism at home or even the numbers who will choose a Chilean red over an Australian or French vintage on their way home tonight (judging by the numbers on Facebook who said they planned to hoist a celebratory glass of Chile's finest, the nation's wine industry should enjoy a post-rescue windfall)," notes CNN. The donated Oakley sunglasses worn by each of the miners as they greeted the world could serve as canaries in the coal mine: According to one estimate, Oakley's largess netted the equivalent of $41 million in television advertising time alone. Foreign travel to Chile, which celebrated its 200th anniversary of independence from Spain last month, has been rebuilding since an 8.8 earthquake rocked the central part of the South American country in February. The desolate mine location near Copiapo isn't a tourist draw yet, though there's talk of building an underground museum and preserving Camp Hope, the ad hoc tent city (complete with school and hair salon) that housed family members, rescue workers and media during the 69-day ordeal. But more than 400 miles to the north, the Atacama Desert outpost of San Pedro de Atacama - where I'll be on vacation next month - is booming with trendy boutique hotels and tour companies offering excursions into the world's driest landscape. "At this point, I don't think we have a way to measure a spike in interest in the Atacama, (but) certainly this has put a positive spin on Chile, and our ability to handle a crisis of this magnitude," notes Kristina Schreck, author of Frommer's Chile. "Yesterday the country felt a sense of indescribable euphoria, celebrating in the streets, honking horns. It made me very proud of my adopted country." Meanwhile, it's a safe bet the miners themselves won't be turning to the Atacama for R&R. Rescued miner and Elvis fan Edison Pena scored an all-expenses-paid trip to Graceland, while a Greek mining company has offered the men and their guests a week-long jaunt to Greece and the soccer team Real Madrid has invited them to watch a match at its stadium in Spain.
The newly kindled Israeli- Greek romance continues to blossom, as Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas is expected in Jerusalem on Monday, a week after a high level official from the Greek Prime Minister’s Office came to Israel to “map out fields of cooperation” between the two countries. Droustas will arrive as part of a three-day regional tour that will also take him to the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. A Greek diplomatic official said the visit is further indication of the significant strengthening of ties between the two countries. His visit will come just four days after Greece and Israel are scheduled to conclude a four-day joint military exercise. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paid the first visit by an Israeli prime minister to Greece in August, a month after his Greek counterpart George Papandreou came to Israel. The recent sharp deterioration in ties with Turkey has led to a significant warming of Israel’s ties with other traditional Turkish rivals in the region, such as Cyprus, Bulgaria and – most markedly – Greece, which for many years was viewed in Jerusalem as one of the least friendly countries toward Israel in Europe. Earlier this week, the minister of state in the Greek Prime Minister’s Office, Haris Pamboukis, visited Jerusalem and held a number of meetings to discuss ways to advance the diplomatic, security and economic relations with Israel. Among the issues reportedly discussed with Pamboukis was the possibility of building an underwater pipeline form Israel to Greece, through which Israel could export natural gas to Europe. Turkey was in the past considered as the logical partner for this pipeline, since it is closer, but the recent strain in relations has forced a re-evaluation of these types of deals with Ankara.
III. UPI - Israel will sell Russia spy drones
Israel's decision to sell $400 million worth of unmanned spy drones to Russia will help contain Iran's nuclear program, an official says. Israel Aerospace Industries will sell the drones to Russian arms maker OPK Oboronprom in the next three years, and the unmanned aerial vehicles will be assembled in Russia, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. "This is a huge step toward deepening cooperation between IAI and Russian industry. This agreement will also strengthen the bilateral relationship between Israel and Russia," the two companies said in the statement. Russia agreed to purchase drones costing $50 million in 2009, the report said.
Russia has described as a provocation a decision by the Georgian authorities to scrap visas for residents of Russia's North Caucasus republics. "The attempt itself to divide Russia's population into different categories contradicts civilized interstate communication norms," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued on Thursday. Tbilisi's move is yet another attempt to "destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus" and "draw attention away from the Georgian authorities' destructive policies towards [the former Georgian republics of] South Ossetia and Abkhazia," the ministry said. Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze said on Monday that Georgia was planning to introduce a visa-free regime with Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Adygeya. On Tuesday, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said that the visa-free regime would come into effect on October 13. Russians outside the North Caucasus will still need a visa to enter Georgia. Later in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Georgia's decision, which had not been discussed with Russia, was "yet another propagandist move." Tbilisi broke off diplomatic ties with Moscow after a five-day war in August 2008 over Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia. Russia recognized South Ossetia and another breakaway republic, Abkhazia, shortly after ceasefire.
V. FOXNEWS - Ahmadinejad in Lebanon
Iranian, Hezbollah, and Lebanese flags line the streets of Lebanon. They are everywhere, from Beirut down to the southern border with Israel--and so is Iran's growing influence in Lebanon. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the second day of his visit to Lebanon, addressed a crowd of supporters in the town of Bint Jbeil, in the country's south. During the 2006 war with Israel it was the site of heavy clashes between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters. According to some estimates, Iran has paid as much as $1 billion to help with reconstruction efforts. "We consider him a hero," said Mahmoud Arabi, 72, from Bint Jbeil. "He stood with us in all difficult times and he has a big heart." In a videolink appearance on Wednesday night, Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah praised Ahmadinejad's effort to rebuild Lebanon, adding that Iran has never told Hezbollah what to do. But many in Lebanon and the west disagree. The White House on Wednesday expressed concern over Ahmadinejad's visit. "I think that it also suggests that Hezbollah values its allegiance to Iran over its allegiance to Lebanon," said Robert Gibbs, White House Spokesman.
Rival Cypriot leaders opened a new crossing point linking the ethnically split island's Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities Thursday, offering a boost to plodding reunification talks. The opening of the Limnitis-Yesilirmak crossing in the island's remote northwest satisfies a decades-long demand by Greek and Turkish Cypriot area residents to shorten travel times across the divide there and help the region's development. The crossing is the seventh through a 180-kilometer (112-mile) United Nations-controlled no man's land separating the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north from the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south that have opened since 2003. Cyprus was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded. Cypriot government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou hailed the opening Thursday as the culmination of "many months of difficult efforts" as part of a government policy to open as many crossings as possible — without acting as a substitute for a peace deal. The push for a Limnitis-Yesilirmak crossing began in early 2008 when Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and then Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat embarked on a renewed peace drive — the latest in a series of failed talks stretching back 36 years. Months of negotiations ensued until work by a Greek and Turkish Cypriot joint venture to repave a six-kilometer (3.7-mile) stretch of road began in March. The United States and the European Union funded the project. Christofias and Talat's successor, Dervis Eroglu, conducted a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday attended by EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule. The crossing reduces travel time for Greek Cypriots in the area heading to the capital, Nicosia by about 1.5 hours. Peace talks between Christofias and Eroglu have been slow because of the complexity of the issues they have to tackle, particularly arrangements on private property lost during the war. Most of the property in the north belongs to Greek Cypriots and Christofias wants them to have the first say on what will happen to it. Eroglu wants the current occupants to decide.
VII. VISION - Turkey's dwindling Christians fear end is approaching
Andreas Zografos left Turkey in 1974 amid economic and political turmoil to find work in Europe, but he always knew he would return home. "The ties of this land are strong. I was drawn back by the blue of the sea, the colour of the sky," he says. A Greek Orthodox Christian, Zografos, 63, and his wife today tend to the 19th-century St Nicholas Church, where his grandfather painted vibrant icons, on Heybeliada, or Halki in Greek, an island off the Istanbul coast. Heybeliada was home to a few thousand ethnic Greeks when he left, Zografos says. About 25 remain, part of a dwindling community of 2,500 Greeks in Istanbul, capital of the Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire until the Ottoman conquest of 1453. Istanbul, a city of 13 million Muslims, is still the seat of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox. But vast numbers of Christians have left their ancient homeland and now make up just 0.13 percent of Turkey's population of 73 million people. Some 60,000 Armenians and 15,000 Syriac Orthodox also live in Turkey, and there are much smaller communities of Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics, Chaldeans and others. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to expand rights for religious minorities to meet the standards of the European Union, which Turkey aspires to join. But many Christians say they still face deep-rooted discrimination. Non-Muslims are tacitly banned from jobs in the state bureaucracy and security forces. Zografos finished primary school and began working at a hairdresser's at age 13. After finishing military duty at age 22, he could not earn enough income to provide for his family. The EU has said that applications to open places of worship by non-Muslim citizens are generally refused in Turkey and that some groups say security forces monitor their worship. Attacks against Christians are infrequent but sensational. In 2006, a Roman Catholic priest was murdered. Earlier this year, a Catholic bishop was stabbed to death at his home in southern Turkey. The bishop's driver was arrested, and the Vatican said the murder was not politically motivated. Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink was slain in 2007. Three members of a Bible-publishing firm were tortured and killed the same year. No one has been convicted in either case. Most of Turkey's Christians fled in the upheaval of World War One and the ensuing War of Independence. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were massacred and 1.5 million Greeks deported in a population exchange. A treaty with Western powers in 1923 allowed Istanbul's non-Muslim communities to retain special education and property rights. But decades of economic discrimination and sporadic violence reduced Christians to less than 200,000 by 1955, according to state statistics. Since then, the decline has been precipitous. Today 60 percent of Turkey's Greeks are over the age of 55, according to the patriarchate. Zografos's departure coincided with a peak in tensions between Greeks and Turks in 1974, when Turkey invaded Cyprus. Most Syriacs, who speak a form of Aramaic, the language of Jesus, abandoned their homeland in southeastern Turkey more recently, fleeing violence between separatist Kurds and the Turkish army in the 1990s. Turkey has confiscated billions of dollars worth of property belonging to Armenian and Greek foundations when they can no longer fill schools or churches. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled these seizures are illegal. Since 1971 the government has also kept closed the Holy Theological School of Halki, perched on Heybeliada's highest ridge, called the Hill of Hope. Without a seminary, Bartholomew struggles to dispatch enough clergy to celebrate mass at the churches that do still operate.