I. WASHINGTONPOST - Campaign 2010: House Races, A closer look at the 435 House races (Interactive Map)
Political Landscape. Will the Republicans take control of the House in 2010? Use this map to track all 435 House races, analyze past election results and drill down to district-level data.
II. WPR - Global Insider: Israel-Greece Relations
Israel is increasingly turning to Greece to compensate for the decline in its relationship with Turkey. Israel recently held air force exercises in Greek air space, and the two countries have signed a civilian aviation agreement. In an e-mail interview, Efraim Inbar, professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, explains the growing relationship between Israel and Greece. WPR: What is the historical military and political relationship between Israel and Greece? Efraim Inbar: Politico-military cooperation between Greece and Israel is a new phenomenon. Greece has been one of the least-friendly states in the European Union toward Israel because of its traditional good relations with the Arab world and its desire to elicit support on the Cyprus issue. Leftist tendencies and latent anti-Americanism in Greece's domestic politics, as well as church interests in the Holy Land, did not facilitate good relations. Full diplomatic relations were only established in 1990, and the strategic partnership between Israel and Turkey in the 1990s prevented closer bilateral relations fromd eveloping. WPR: What is driving their growing military ties? Efraim Inbar: Israel is generally interested in greater cooperation with states in the Eastern Mediterranean, its hinterland. As relations with Turkey soured as a result of Ankara's shifting foreign policy orientation, Israel tried to improve relations with Greece and Cyprus. Israel needs flying space, as its territory is too small for its air force to conduct effective training exercises. Moreover, its navy has begun to develop capabilities to project power and needs a testing ground further away from Israel's coastline. Meanwhile, Greece fears Turkey's changing foreign policy orientation more than any other European country. Turkey's growing role in its former Ottoman provinces -- now independent states -- in the Balkans has also brought Athens and Jerusalem together. Moreover, Greece shares Israeli fears of Iran's growing ability to project power from Lebanon into the Balkans and Europe. WPR: Is the new aviation agreement a precursor of broader political and military cooperation? Efraim Inbar: This is certainly a possibility. Israel can be useful to Greece by providing weapons and military technology in exchange for training areas, while Greece can also provide improved Israeli access to the EU. Cooperation in monitoring terrorists and illegal activities in the Eastern Mediterranean is another common strategic interest. Nevertheless, Greece's ability to play a significant role as a partner for Israel is limited. It is a small state and is constrained by its EU membership and domestic anti-Israeli forces.
III. WSJ - Turkey Says It Won't Block NATO Plan
Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Sunday it was "out of the question" for Turkey to oppose security measures the North Atlantic Treaty Organization considers necessary, apparently ruling out any move to block a missile shield the U.S. is proposing for the military alliance. Mr. Davutoglu laid out three principles on which he said NATO member Turkey would base its approach to the missile shield. But in the Turkish government's most detailed comments to date on the proposal, he gave no indication of whether Ankara would agree to host the system's radar sensors. Leaders of the 28 NATO member states, including Turkey, are expected to decide at a summit in Portugal on Nov. 19 whether the organization should build the shield. Because all NATO decisions are made by consensus, any alliance member could veto the missile shield plan. Mr. Davutoglu's remaining principles, however, appeared to amount to conditions that Turkey wants to set for the plan. "NATO is obliged to take into account the security of all allied countries. Accordingly, a system excluding some parts of Turkey is unacceptable," he said, according to Anadolu, confirming that Turkey is demanding the shield cover the entire country. Diplomats say Turkey is the preferred, but not the only, choice to locate the missile shield's radar sensors, because of its border with Iran. The third and final principle, Mr. Davutoglu said, was that Turkey wouldn't allow itself to become a frontline state for NATO, as it was during the Cold War. "We do not have a perception of threat in our adjacent areas, including Iran, Russia, Syria and the other adjacent countries," Anadolu quoted him as saying. "NATO should exclude any formula that confronts Turkey with a group of countries in its threat definitions and planning. … We do not want a Cold War zone or psychology around us." A White House fact sheet outlining the U.S. administration's missile-defense-shield plan specifically names Iran as the threat the proposed shield is designed to counter. Diplomats familiar with talks between Ankara and Washington over the planned shield say Turkey is asking that any document produced at the NATO summit not mention Iran. The NATO missile-defense shield has triggered a lively debate in Turkey's media, however. Religious-conservative newspapers and commentators oppose the plan, describing it as a "trap" set by the U.S. to reverse Turkey's improvement in relations with countries such as Iran and Syria. They also have speculated that the true purpose of the shield is to protect Israel, rather than Europe, Turkey or the U.S. More-secular media and commentators, meanwhile, have warned that refusing to take part in the shield could isolate Turkey within NATO, undermining its most important security relationships.
EULEX head Xavier Bout de Marnhac has said that the EU mission in Kosovo does not plan to take control over northern Kosovo by force. He however reiterated that the rule of law and more visible presence of international institutions has to be established in the predominantly Serb area. In an interview with Beta news agency, De Marnhac said violence was not the way to solve problems, elaborating, in the interest of clarity, that he did not believe violence could produce any positive result. He added that there was definitely no intention on the part of EULEX to resort to violence. De Marnhac, who in 2007 and 2008 as an active French general spearheaded KFOR, added that he understood there was a certain amount of concern among the Serb population in northern Kosovo about international presence there. However, he pointed out that it was for the benefit of the Serb community that EULEX wanted to establish firmer rule of law there, to ensure economic advancement and other forms of progress in the area. He reiterated that establishing the rule of law, whose presence in northern Kosovo he did not rate highly, was one of his priorities. De Marnhac went on to say that there were indications that this was what the local community wanted too and that he would therefore visit that part of the territory soon.
V. RT - ISS marks decade in space
The International Space Station celebrates its 10th birthday – a decade of constant service. It is the longest period of continuous human habitation outside the atmosphere of the Earth. The first permanent crew reached the International Space Station on November 2, 2000. It is arguably humanity's most ambitious engineering project to date, a mixture of science, technology and political cooperation between former sworn enemies. In the 10 years since, the ISS has expanded to the size of a football field, and received 200 visitors. Now the station is nearly complete, but the jury on what it has achieved is still out. “The ISS is a breakthrough of cooperation,” said Yury Gidzenko from ISS Expedition 1. “Before, there were separate space agencies. Now they work together. It is a leap forward.” Frank De Winne, who was the first European astronaut to command an ISS mission, said the ambitious project could not have been possible without global co-operation. “The space station would not be there without co-operation between Russia and the US,” De Winne said. “But we also have to take into account the smaller partners – the European Space Agency, the Japanese Space Agency, Canada … they all made great contributions to the ISS.” The ISS has it critics, however. “This station has cost taxpayers $100 billion. And that's just absurd. It's too much. But it's there,” stated space entrepreneur Jeff Manber. Many now admit they were not sure what to expect from the station. And that includes the Expedition 1 cosmonauts themselves. Gidzenko now trains potential ISS crew members. His own training was more chaotic. “When we started training for it, the station itself did not exist. There were no manuals. There were no exercise machines,” he recalled. The first crew's job was to fully activate the station. Much of it had been assembled separately in Russia and the United States, and the first time these parts came together was in space. “The first two weeks on there were extremely stressful. If we failed, we'd have had to return to Earth and abandon the station. It would never have been constructed as planned,” recalled Sergey Krikalev, another ISS Expedition 1 crew member. Expedition 1 was a success. Despite problems with construction following the Columbia Shuttle disaster three years later, most of the modules were eventually successfully docked. The completed space station provides a unique platform for experiments in weightlessness that could develop new materials and medicines. But some believe that the value of the ISS is not in its scientific discoveries. Its lifespan has already been extended to 2020, and possibly beyond. Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, from Expedition 25, said that now there are projects of using the ISS as a docking port for missions to the Moon and even Mars. And if mankind does venture further afield, the ISS will serve both as a blueprint and instruction manual for spaceship dos and don’ts.
Hezbollah is planning to seize control of the Lebanese government if charged by International Court of Justice over the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, security sources in Lebanon said on Tuesday. The sources told the A-Sharq al-Awsat daily that the militant group, the Amal faction and other pro-Syrian elements were coordinating a coup of Beirut and southern Lebanon, which they planned to split amongst themselves. Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah last week urged Lebanon to halt its cooperation with the inquiry into the 2005 assassination and accused its investigators of sending information to Israel, the latest escalation in a war of words over the inquiry which threatens to plunge the country into more turmoil. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, stepped up its campaign against the tribunal after reports emerged in recent months that the court's prosecutor may indict members of the group sometime in the next few months. "Any call to boycott the tribunal is an attempt to obstruct justice," a representative of the tribunal said. "The Special Tribunal for Lebanon will continue to rely on the full cooperation of the Lebanese government and the international community, according to its statute." Nasrallah's remarks came after two international investigators were forced by a crowd of women to leave a doctor's clinic in southern Beirut, a bastion of Hezbollah, where they had made an appointment to review files. The tribunal condemned what it called an "attack on its staff" and said it would not be deterred from its investigation.
VII. ALMASRYALYOUM - Egypt, Coptic Church reject al-Qaeda threats
Alexandrian church officials, along with Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, rejected on Monday a statement by an al-Qaeda-linked group responsible for Sunday's attack on a Catholic church in central Baghdad. In the statement, the militants gave the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church 48 hours to "release Muslim women detained in churches" in Egypt. Spokesperson for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Hossam Zaki, on Monday said Egypt condemns such warnings. Kamil Seddeeq, secretary of the Coptic Ecclesiastical Council, echoed Zaki's rejection. Coptic Christians are carrying out their daily routines and religious rituals as normal because they trust the Egyptian government's ability to protect its land, people and sacred places, Seddeeq added. "We, as Copts, would like to remind al-Qaeda that Egypt's Copts are not like Iraq's Christians," he told Al-Masry Al-Youm. "And Egypt is not another Iraq." Antonious Ghattas, acting deputy of the Coptic Catholics Cathedral in Alexandria, dismissed the threat as vacuous. Places of worship, mosques or churches, should never be a target for attacks, he added. Ghattas denied that there were any detained converts in Egypt's churches. Refaat Fekri, chief priest at the Ard Sherif Church in Shubra, said the al-Qaeda threats will eventually lead to political conflict between states. "What is it that the Copts have done to al-Qaeda to make it say this?" he questioned, adding that such threats do not frighten Egyptian Copts. The al-Qaeda off-shoot, The Islamic State of Iraq, said it carried out the attack in Iraq to "support our weak Muslim sisters who are detained in the Muslim land of Egypt." The group also posted a video depicting a gunman leading a group and threatening the Coptic Church in Egypt. The gunman mentioned the names of Shehata and Qostanteen. The statement warned Copts that if they do not respond to the group's demands they will be opening the door to serious harm to Christians not only in Iraq, but also in Egypt, the Levant and other countries in the region. The statement warned that Christians and churches will be targets for attacks if they do not respond. Egyptian security forces heightened security preparedness across Egypt. A security source said the Interior Ministry is maintaining a continuous patrol of churches and preventing cars from parking around them. Entry to churches is also subject to strict scrutiny. The Holy Synod has also held a meeting to discuss the threats made by al-Qaeda.