2009 October: International

Karen Deyoung and Joshua Partlow, Vote probe to force Karzai back to polls, The Age, 2009 Oct. 17 (an investigation into fraud allegations in Afghanistan's August elections has dropped President Hamid Karzai's share of the vote to 47 per cent, triggering a run-off that could be announced as early as today)
Frank Zeller, Japan pulls out of Afghan support mission, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (Japan has told the US it will end a naval refuelling mission backing its war in Afghanistan, a month before US President Barack Obama visits Tokyo, according to a defence official)
Elisabeth Bumiller and Mark Landler, Afghan civilian efforts faltering, The Age, 2009 Oct. 13 (US Administration officials say the US is falling far short of President Obama's goals of fighting corruption, create a functioning government and legal system, and improving a police force riddled with incompetence)
Anne Davies, Obama faces pressure on Afghan strategy, The Age, 2009 Oct. 6 (over the next few weeks President Barack Obama faces one of the toughest decisions of his young presidency: whether to increase the military effort of the United States in Afghanistan in an attempt to bring some measure of stability to the war-torn nation, or step back and effectively acknowledge that he is better to fight terrorism through greater efforts in Pakistan)
Walter Pincus, Lack of trainers 'hinders Afghan security forces', The Age, 2009 Oct. 4 (as the White House weighs a request from the top US commander in Afghanistan for more troops, a new report from the Pentagon's inspector-general attributes shortcomings in the Afghan army and police to a shortage of foreign mentors and trainers, corruption and illiteracy among Afghan soldiers, and a lack of strategic planning)
Julian Barnes, General in tug-of-war on Afghanistan strategy, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (the top US commander in Afghanistan has staunchly defended his emphasis on stabilising the country with a troop-intensive counter-insurgency strategy, arguing that reducing US aims in the country would be “shortsighted”;
Jason Koutsoukis, Iran agrees to let in inspectors, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (Iran has agreed to open its nuclear facilities to international inspectors later this month after landmark talks in Geneva yielded what US President Barack Obama described as a “positive beginning”)

Africa

The Americas

Asia

Banks step in as dollar tumbles, BBC, 2009 Oct. 8 (Asian central banks intervene in the currency markets in an attempt to slow the slide of the US dollar)

The Balkans and Greece

Ian Traynor, Bosnia's Serbs want to secede, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (the leader of the Serbian half of Bosnia has demanded the right to break up the country as part of a constitutional reform package that is being pushed by the European Union and the US)
John Hadoulis, Greek socialists in resounding election win, The Age, 2009 Oct. 6 (Greek socialist leader George Papandreou has pledged to “turn a page” on scandals and economic malaise associated with the departing conservative government, which suffered a shocking electoral defeat)
Demetris Nellas, Shift to left expected as Greeks vote, The Age, 2009 Oct. 5 (Greeks have voted in a general election that is likely to result in a change in government, with opposition leader George Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement heavily favoured to beat Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis' conservative New Democracy)

The Baltic and Poland

Latvia 'to find more budget cuts', BBC, 2009 Oct. 9 (Latvia's PM pledges to extend planned budget cuts in order to meet targets agreed with the EU to secure rescue loans)

Canada

The Caribbean

(see Russia, and Asia and Europe for others)

George Ballantine, Cuba bloggers test government limits, BBC, 2009 Oct. 8 (Cuba's dynamic emerging blogging community has recently been testing the limits of free expression with posts ranging from vivid accounts of everyday life to sometimes risky calls for political change in the Communist-run state)

Central Eurasia

Mark Landler and Sebnem Arsu, Turkey, Armenia make a kind of peace, The Age, 2009 Oct. 12 (Turkey and Armenia have signed a landmark agreement to restore normal diplomatic relations and open their borders, after a last-minute dispute over language sent US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other diplomats into frantic efforts to salvage the deal)

China

AFP, Six more to die for China unrest, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (a court in western China's Xinjiang region has sentenced six more people to death over deadly ethnic unrest in July, the state Xinhua news agency reports, bringing the total to 12)
John Garnaut, China warns Australia on world pact, The Age, 2009 Oct. 14 (a Chinese adviser believes the world will forge a new climate change pact at Copenhagen in part because China is recognising it can lead the world on clean technology)

Europe

Paola Totaro, Italy PM backs Blair for top post, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, seemingly oblivious to the possibility that his support might be deemed counterproductive, has enthusiastically backed Tony Blair for the post of first president of the European Council)
New York Times, 'Eurosclerosis' threatens EU economic recovery, The Age, 2009 Oct. 11 (as Asia and the United States emerge from the global economic crisis, Europe appears likely to be the world's laggard, threatening a return to the dark days of “Eurosclerosis”)
Euro economy 'is out of freefall', BBC, 2009 Oct. 8 (the eurozone economy is "out of freefall", the head of the ECB says after the bank keeps rates unchanged at 1%)
EU approves new Microsoft pledges, BBC, 2009 Oct. 7 (the European Union voices its approval for Microsoft's latest pledges to curb its anti-competitive practices)

France

Carole Landry, Row over top job for Sarkozy's son, The Age, 2009 Oct. 14 (the imminent promotion of President Nicolas Sarkozy's son to manage France's wealthiest business district has drawn howls of protest and derision over the 23-year-old's meteoric political rise)
Scientist on French terror charge, BBC, 2009 Oct. 12 (French magistrates file preliminary charges against a particle physicist accused of links to al-Qaeda)
Paola Totaro, French minister's sex tourism memoir sparks outrage, The Age, 2009 Oct. 9 (four years after publication, the memoirs of French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand have sparked a national storm after a political opponent read extracts on national television in which Mr Mitterrand described having sex with boys in a Bangkok brothel)
Angelique Chrisafis, Mass suicides rock France Telecom, The Age, 2009 Oct. 7 (the deputy chief executive of France Telecom has resigned in the wake of a spate of staff suicides that unions have blamed on a bullying management style and brutal approach to restructuring)

Germany

(see The Pacific for others)

Kate Connolly, Devilish Nazi art gnomes spark outcry in Germany, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (the height of kitsch they may be, but no one in Germany would usually think twice about seeing a garden gnome, given there are 25 million of them around the country; but a battery of 1250 of them that appeared on a square in a Bavarian town this week has caused an outcry, not least because their arms are fixed in a Nazi salute)

Indonesia

Yuko Narushima, Focus on smugglers 'may upset Jakarta', The Age, 2009 Oct. 15 (making people smugglers the villains in the asylum seeker debate risks damaging Australian diplomatic ties with Indonesia, an academic has warned)
Nick Butterly and Andrew Probyn, Rudd call stops refugee boat, The Age, 2009 Oct. 13 (Indonesia's navy swooped on a boatload of 260 Australia-bound asylum seekers at the weekend after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made an extraordinary personal plea to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono)
Presi Mandari, Corruption fighter on murder charge, The Age, 2009 Oct. 9 (prosecutors have charged Indonesia's former anti-corruption commissioner with murder and called for the death penalty for allegedly masterminding the killing of a rival in a love triangle)
Tom Allard, Party vote spurns son of Suharto, The Age, 2009 Oct. 9 (the convicted murderer and son of Indonesia's long-serving dictator Suharto, Tommy Suharto, has spectacularly failed to regain control of Golkar, the party founded by his late father)
——, Bigger earthquake looms for West Sumatra, The Age, 2009 Oct. 8 (scientists who examined last week's devastating earthquake in West Sumatra have come to an alarming conclusion: it was not “the big one” they have long been forecasting for Padang)
Brendan Nicholson, Disease fears as rain lashes victims, The Age, 2009 Oct. 6 (heavy rain across Indonesia's earthquake disaster zone hampered relief efforts as health officials sought to contain the risk of disease caused by the thousands of buried bodies)
Tom Allard, Little hope of finding more alive, The Age, 2009 Oct. 5 (hopes of rescuing hundreds of people buried in landslides and collapsed homes have evaporated just as humanitarian aid finally began to arrive in the region most devastated by Wednesday's powerful earthquake in the Indonesian province of West Sumatra)
Tom Allard, What next?, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (as was so tragically highlighted this week, Padang is no stranger to earthquakes; indeed, in a country that sits atop three volatile tectonic plates that heave and shudder beneath it, Padang is arguably the most disaster-prone city in the most seismically active country on earth)
Adam Morton, More to come, expert warns, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (Sumatra faces further devastation from a much larger earthquake and probable tsunami within decades, a leading geologist has warned)

Iraq

Ireland

Paola Totaro, Ireland does U-turn on Europe, The Age, 2009 Oct. 5 (Irish voters have delivered a resounding “yes” for the Lisbon Treaty, paving the way for a new European constitution and new era for the European Union)

Italy

(see Asia and The Pacific for others)

Paola Totaro, Berlusconi and the turquoise socks, The Age, 2009 Oct. 20 (a television station owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has secretly filmed a judge who ruled against him in a bribery case)
Paola Totaro, Italy PM backs Blair for top post, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, seemingly oblivious to the possibility that his support might be deemed counterproductive, has enthusiastically backed Tony Blair for the post of first president of the European Council)
Nick Squires, Berlusconi's latest ill-judged slip, The Age, 2009 Oct. 11 (Silvio Berlusconi has made another embarrassing gaffe by saying he has spent millions of euros on “judges”; the Italian Prime Minister made the comment on Friday while making an impassioned plea, claiming he was the most persecuted man in history)
Paola Totaro, Berlusconi forced to swallow 'mere tadpole' in media diet of frogs, The Age, 2009 Oct. 9 (Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faces the political fight of his life after the nation's top court overturned the law tailor-made to shield him from prosecution and declared it illegal)
Jessica Donai, Illegal buildings blamed for Sicily's deadly mudslide, The Age, 2009 Oct. 4 (poor drainage caused by illegal construction was blamed for mudslides that killed at least 20 people in eastern Sicily on Friday, with dozens missing and hundreds more injured; the head of the Italian Civil Protection Service, Guido Bertolaso, directly blamed the construction of houses without permits—a practice rampant in Sicily and around Italy—for the deaths)
Mud slides kill four in Sicily, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (at least four people are dead and 20 missing after a river of mud flooded parts of the Sicilian city of Messina as the area was hit by heavy rain)

Japan

One in six Japanese in poverty, The Age, 2009 Oct. 22 (in Japan's first official calculation of its relative poverty rate, the ministry said 15.7 per cent of Japanese people lived on less than half the median disposable income in 2006; the figure, based on national statistics of income in 2006, was up from a figure of 14.6 per cent for 1997, according to the newly released ministry data)
Frank Zeller, Japan pulls out of Afghan support mission, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (Japan has told the US it will end a naval refuelling mission backing its war in Afghanistan, a month before US President Barack Obama visits Tokyo, according to a defence official)
AP, AFP, High landslide risk as typhoon batters Japan, The Age, 2009 Oct. 9 (Typhoon Melor, bringing gusts of up to 198 km/h, was cutting a swathe across densely populated central Japan - the first tropical storm to make landfall since 2007, the weather agency said; it brought heavy rain and strong winds that ripped roofs off houses, damaged walls and toppled trees, blocking roads and railways in central Japan)

Korea

AFP, Koreas sit down to talk despite mixed signals, The Age, 2009 Oct. 17 (a South Korean team has begun talks in North Korea on family reunions and other humanitarian issues after a week of mixed signals from the communist state about its willingness to improve frosty ties)
Telegraph, The 'worst building in the world' rises again, The Age, 2009 Oct. 17 (sitting empty and unfinished, the Ryugyong Hotel is regarded as an example of communist folly; it has variously been called “the hotel of doom” and “the worst building in the world”)
AFP, Pyongyang 'ready to talk', The Age, 2009 Oct. 7 (North Korea says it is willing to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations but only after talks with the United States first)

Latin America

AFP, A dozen dead in Rio drug riots, The Age, 2009 Oct. 19 (at least 12 people have been killed and a helicopter downed in fierce clashes between gangs and police in Rio de Janeiro weeks after the city won its bid to host the 2016 Olympics)
Verónica Psetizki, Laptop for every pupil in Uruguay, BBC, 2009 Oct. 16 (Uruguay has given computers to all of its primary school children as part of the One Laptop Per Child scheme)
AFP, Columbus Day brings protests, The Age, 2009 Oct. 14 (tens of thousands of indigenous people across Latin America have protested against the anniversary of Christopher Columbus' 1492 discovery of the Americas)
Ex-TV crime show host gives himself up, The Age, 2009 Oct. 11 (a former TV crime show host and state legislator accused of commissioning killings to boost ratings has turned himself in and been jailed on homicide and drug-trafficking charges)

Mexico

Middle Africa

Celia Dugger, Opposition faces Mugabe's 'sword', The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (Roy Bennett, a leader of the political party that long fought Zimbabwe's president but now shares power with him, has been sent back to prison and indicted on terrorism charges; Bennett, who was supposed to serve as a deputy agriculture minister in the coalition Government, is to go to trial on Monday)
Barry FitzGerald, BHP keeps eye on the Congo, The Age, 2009 Oct. 10 (BHP to consider building an 800,000 tonnes-a-year aluminium smelter in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the Congo River is said to be the world's largest underutilised source of hydro power)

Middle East

Jason Koutsoukis, Israel moves to head off Gaza report, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (Israel was concentrating on an intense diplomatic effort last night to prevent the United Nations Security Council from adopting a report accusing it of war crimes in Gaza)
Jason Koutsoukis, Bible-guided explorer seeks the Oily Grail, The Age, 2009 Oct. 12 (convinced that God gave the Jews a fair share of the massive fossil fuel deposits found elsewhere in the Middle East, John Brown has devoted the past 26 years of his life to finding out where God hid the oil in modern Israel)
Jason Koutsoukis, Abbas backs down on Gaza report, The Age, 2009 Oct. 9 (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has reversed a decision not to endorse a United Nations report highly critical of Israel's conduct in the Gaza war)
Rory McCarthy, Torture trial puts focus on Fatah, The Age, 2009 Oct. 7 (Palestinian authorities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have begun a rare military trial of security officers accused of torturing a Hamas suspect to death)

North Africa

(see also Indonesia and Japan)

'Phishing' raids in US and Egypt, BBC, 2009 Oct. 7 (police in the US and in Egypt arrest dozens of people accused of links to an alleged identity theft ring targeting US banks)
Jeffrey Gettleman, Somalis starve as hitch depletes food help, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (one in five Somali children is suffering from malnutrition. Tens of thousands need urgent medical care to survive; the whole middle belt of the country is on the brink of famine)

The Pacific

Jonathan Pearlman, Trade no cure for Pacific, The Age, 2009 Oct. 14 (Pacific nations are overly dependent on trade with Australia and need to engage with the rest of the world to address rising levels of poverty and hunger, an AusAID report says)
Hernan De La Cruz, Police, military search for priest, The Age, 2009 Oct. 13 (while nobody has claimed responsibility for the abduction, police and military said they suspect that either the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group or the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front was involved)
AFP, Boat plea as Philippine floods swamp towns, The Age, 2009 Oct. 10 (thousands of people are stranded amid worsening floods in the northern Philippines after heavy rain forced authorities to release water from an overflowing dam; local officials made urgent pleas yesterday for inflatable boats and helicopters to rescue those stranded in Pangasinan province)
Audrey McAvoy and Rod McGuirk, Samoans brace for ordeal of burying loved ones, The Age, 2009 Oct. 5 (scores of grieving people made a heartbreaking decision to sign over victims of the tsunami to the state for burial rather than taking them back to ravaged villages for traditional funerals)
Filipinos evacuated as new typhoon looms, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (Parma, packing gusts of 230 km/h, was forecast to hit rural areas in the north of the Philippines' main island of Luzon before dawn today)
Malcolm Brown, After the waves came, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (the lessons of Asia's 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that killed 230,000 people had not been forgotten and there had been an education campaign in Samoa; but some people, including some tourists, did not register the warning signs)
Malcolm Brown and Michael Field, Thousands homeless; Samoans live in fear, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (as thousands of homeless people huddled in makeshift hillside camps, officials said they feared up to 150 people may have been killed on Samoa, which would bring the total number dead across the Pacific to 190, including 31 in neighbouring American Samoa and nine in Tonga)

Russia

Luke Harding, Charges seen as attempt to conceal Stalin terror, The Age, 2009 Oct. 17 (a Russian historian investigating the fate of Germans imprisoned in the Soviet Union during the Second World War has been arrested in an apparent clampdown on historical research into the Stalin era by the Russian authorities)
Miriam Elder, Russia brewing on beer war, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (Russia has signalled a renewed bid to get to grips with rife alcoholism as the Government drafts a law to raise taxes on beer by 300 per cent and ban its sale in the country's ubiquitous kiosks)

Scandinavia

Helena Merriman, Swedes divided over bunny biofuel, BBC, 2009 Oct. 15 (residents in Stockholm are divided over reports that rabbits are being used to make biofuel)
Simon Hancock, Iceland looks to serve the world, BBC, 2009 Oct. 9 (if a large internet media company operating thousands and thousands of servers relocated its servers to Iceland, that company would save greater than half a million metric tons of carbon annually)

South Africa

South Asia

Matt Wade, Dreams of freedom drive Tamils onto boats, The Age, 2009 Oct. 24 (for Vilvarajah, the yearning to get away far outweighs any concern about Australia's border protection rules; he's convinced he will be killed if he stays and that's reason enough to make a bid for Australia)
Matt Wade, An unholy trinity, The Age, 2009 Oct. 21 (experts warn the growing level of co-operation between extremist groups poses a threat that goes well beyond Pakistan's borders)
Matt Wade, Pakistani extremists keep funds flowing, The Age, 2009 Oct. 20 (extremist groups in Pakistan are using businesses such as schools, housing projects and even media to help pay for their operations)
Lindsay Murdoch, 'Thousands more' Tamils to come, The Age, 2009 Oct. 20 (people-smuggling networks are moving to bring out thousands more Tamils from war-ravaged northern Sri Lanka)
Piecing together truth of shattering attack, The Age, 2009 Oct. 17 (Aqeel Ahmed is a busy terrorist; on March 3, he led about a dozen men armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and grenades in an ambush on the Sri Lankan cricket team's bus en route to a Test match at Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium; six months after the attack, the aims and identities of the attackers may be coming to light)
Maldives cabinet makes a splash, BBC, 2009 Oct. 17 (the government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the threat of global warming to the low-lying Indian Ocean nation)
Matt Wade, Lahore hit by three Taliban attacks, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (the Taliban has stepped up its assault on Pakistan's security establishment with synchronised commando-style raids on three law enforcement agencies in the country's second-biggest city, Lahore)
Matt Wade, Pakistan on knife-edge as siege ends, The Age, 2009 Oct. 12 (Pakistanis are wondering where terrorists will strike next after a brazen attack on the symbol of the country's military might ended with a commando operation to free about 40 hostages and regain control of its heavily fortified army headquarters)
Matt Wade, Deadly side of aid dilemma, The Age, 2009 Oct. 10 (five humanitarian workers in Islamabad were buried this week after the Taliban turned its sights on a UN aid agency that feeds 8 million Pakistanis; bomb-proofing, high walls and a team of security guards were not enough to protect the World Food Program's office from a suicide bomber)
Charles Haviland, Sri Lanka military budget raised, BBC, 2009 Oct. 9 (the Sri Lankan parliament approves an additional 20% budget for the country's military for the remainder of this year)
AFP, Taliban claim Kabul bombing, The Age, 2009 Oct. 9 (the Taliban have claimed responsibility for a massive suicide car bomb that targeted the Indian embassy in Kabul yesterday, killing 17 people and injuring another 63, most of them civilians)
Matt Wade, Pakistan power struggle over US aid, The Age, 2009 Oct. 9 (a US aid package has put the Pakistani Government and the country's powerful military at odds just as the Obama Administration seeks to broaden the campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan)

Southeast Asia

Ben Doherty, King's illness fuels Thai fears, The Age, 2009 Oct. 17 (fears for the health of Thailand's 81-year-old king have triggered fluctuations on the country's stock exchange amid uncertainty over the succession)

Spain and Portugal

AFP, Spanish protest against abortion plan, The Age, 2009 Oct. 19 (hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Madrid to condemn plans by Spain's socialist Government to liberalise the abortion laws in the overwhelmingly Catholic nation; protesters staged the march to protest against the plan, which would allow girls of 16 to undergo abortions without their parents' consent)

Turkey

U.K.

David Leigh and Rob Evans, Court threat to defence group, The Age, 2009 Oct. 3 (the head of Britain's Serious Fraud Office has signalled his intention to prosecute the arms company BAE on corruption charges, an unprecedented move immediately supported by former attorney-general Lord Goldsmith)

U.S.A.

Graham Bowley, Jobs, homes vanish but Wall Street back in black, The Age, 2009 Oct. 19 (one of the most powerful forces behind the resurgence is not the banks, but the US Government)
Anne Davies, Republicans try to melt Snowe resolve, The Age, 2009 Oct. 16 (conservative Republicans have begun sending bags of salt to Senator Olympia Snowe's Maine office, as part of a protest at her decision to break ranks and vote for a compromise version of US President Barack Obama's health-care scheme; salt is used on US roads to melt snow)
Obama defends new consumer agency, BBC, 2009 Oct. 9 (President Barack Obama launches a staunch defence of his proposed new agency to protect the American consumer)
Banks step in as dollar tumbles, BBC, 2009 Oct. 8 (Asian central banks intervene in the currency markets in an attempt to slow the slide of the US dollar)
US deficit 'hits record $1.4tn', BBC, 2009 Oct. 8 (the annual US budget deficit hits $1.4 trillion estimates say—equal to 9.9% of GDP, more than treble the 2008 level)
Anne Davies, Schwarzenegger backs health plan, The Age, 2009 Oct. 8 (the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has thrown his weight behind US President Barack Obama's health-care efforts, becoming the latest in a group of high-profile Republicans to call for national health-care reform)
'Phishing' raids in US and Egypt, BBC, 2009 Oct. 7 (police in the US and in Egypt arrest dozens of people accused of links to an alleged identity theft ring targeting US banks)
Simon Tisdall, Containment of the war in Afghanistan the most likely option, The Age, 2009 Oct. 6 (the US President knows he is returning to a White House under siege; health care, the economy, spiralling unemployment and other knotty issues are blighting a first term that began with so much promise; the very last thing Obama wants to talk about is America's losing war in Afghanistan)

West Africa