the government eased

 

Some have drawn parallels between Say’s case and that of the

 

Russian band Pussy Riot who staged an impromptu punk

 

performance at Moscow’s main cathedral in February in

 

protest against President Vladimir Putin and the Russian

 

Orthodox Church hierarchy. The three women were convicted of

 

hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, but they insist

 

that their protest was political in nature and not an attack

 

on religion.

 

Turkey has a history of persecuting its artists and writers,

 

and the European Union has long encouraged the nation to

 

improve freedom of speech if it wants to become a member of

 

the bloc one day.

 

In a report on Turkey’s progress toward membership issued

 

last week, the EU criticized Turkey for “recurring

 

infringements of the right to liberty and security and to a

 

fair trial, as well as of the freedom of expression.” It

 

said restrictions on media freedoms and an increasing number

 

of court cases against writers and journalists remained

 

“serious issues.”

 

Turkey’s Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has been prosecuted for

 

his comments about the mass killings of Armenians under a law

 

that made it a crime to insult the Turkish identity before

 

the government eased that law in an amendment in 2008. In

 

2007, ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who received

 

death threats because of his comments about the killings of

 

Armenians by Turks in 1915, was shot dead outside his office

 

in Istanbul.

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Government Appointments Project

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Not even Republicans disputed that Obama's debate performance

was much improved from the listless showing two weeks earlier

that helped spark a rise in the polls for Romney. But the

first post-debate polls were divided, some saying Romney won,

others finding Obama did.

The two rivals meet one more time, next Monday in Florida.

Democrats rebutted Romney's memory of the binders he received

as the newly elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002.

On a conference call arranged by the Democratic National

Committee, a former executive director of the Massachusetts

Government Appointments Project said the group provided the

resumes of women qualified for appointment unprompted. "To be

perfectly clear, Mitt Romney did not request" them, said

Jesse Mermell.

Vice-President Joe Biden, campaigning in battleground

Colorado, mocked Romney on the same topic but in terms more

pungent than Obama's. "What I can't understand is how he's

gotten into this sort of 1950s time warp in terms of women,"

Biden said. "The idea he had to go and ask where a qualified

woman was. He just should have come to my house. He didn't

need a binder."

Romney quickly countered with a combination testimonial and

fundraising appeal from Kerry Healey, who was his lieutenant

governor in Massachusetts. She said he had named numerous

women to his administration, adding, "He sought out our

counsel, and he listened to our advice. We didn't always

agree, but we were always respected."

Obama wore a pink wristband to show support for Breast Cancer

Awareness Month as he campaigned in Iowa and then Ohio, and

reminded his audience that the first legislation he signed

after becoming president made it easier for women to take pay

grievances to court.

Ma Ying-jeou

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The Middle East is already intolerably hot, yet global warming seems to be on the minds of many countries in the region. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Jordan, and, of course, Iran are all pursuing, planning, or exploring their first nuclear power reactors. Just last week, the United Arab Emirates announced that it would go ahead with a civilian nuclear program, making it the first Gulf state to do so. Other states now considering their nuclear options range from Venezuela to Belarus to Indonesia. In justifying their programs to the world, "they've all jumped on the 'nuclear is clean and green' bandwagon," according to Sharon Squassoni of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
For example, Taiwan's president-elect, Ma Ying-jeou, has called for expanding the island's nuclear capacity to help combat climate change. Thailand announced last summer that it would build its first reactor and hopes to ultimately produce 25 percent of the country's electricity from nuclear power. "Without nuclear, you couldn't reduce greenhouse gases," said Energy Minister Piyasvasti Amranand.
Some of this greenery seems sincere. South Africa, for example, which gave up its nuclear weapons program in the early 1990s, has strict anti-pollution regulations that have driven up the cost of coal, making its nuclear expansion sensible. Indeed, although the continent uses little energy, Africa as a whole has taken an intense interest in nuclear power because of its fear of global-warming-induced desertification.