IRAN
Iran is ready to return to nuclear talks
Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press – January 27, 2012
Iran is ready to revive talks with the U.S. and other world powers, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday, but suggested that Tehran’s foes will have to make compromises to prevent negotiations from again collapsing in stalemate.
Israel Senses Bluffing in Iran’s Threats of Retaliation
Ethan Bronner, New York Times – January 26, 2012
Israeli intelligence estimates, backed by academic studies, have cast doubt on the widespread assumption that a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would set off a catastrophic set of events like a regional conflagration, widespread acts of terrorism and sky-high oil prices.
How Iran could beat up on America’s superior military
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor – January 26, 2012
America’s defense budget is roughly 90 times bigger than Iran’s. But Iran has a well-honed strategy of asymmetric warfare.
KOREAN PENINSULA
US team due in NKorea in March to resume hunt for troops missing in action from Korean War
Associated Press – January 26, 2012
U.S. military personnel will travel to North Korea in March to restart efforts to recover thousands of servicemen missing from the 1950-53 Korean War, the Defense Department said Thursday.
UNITED STATES
East Africa Is the New Epicenter of America’s Shadow War
Spencer Ackerman, Wired – January 26, 2012
When Adm. Eric Olson, the former leader of U.S. Special Operations Command, wanted to explain where his forces were going, he would show audiences a photo that NASA took, titled “The World at Night.” The lit areas showed the governed, stable, orderly parts of the planet. The areas without lights were the danger zones — the impoverished, the power vacuums, the places overrun with militants that prompted the attention of elite U.S. troops. And few places were darker, in Olson’s eyes, than East Africa.
Revamped Search Urged for a Nuclear Waste Site
Matthew L. Wald, New York Times – January 26, 2012
A commission appointed to find alternatives to a failed plan to store nuclear waste in the Nevada desert declared on Thursday that the United States would have to develop a “consent-based approach” for choosing a site because leaving the decision to Congress had failed.
Involuntary response
Fissile Materials Working Group, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – January 26, 2012
Earlier this month, widespread inaction on the increasing dangers posed by nuclear proliferation and climate change forced the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock to move one minute closer to midnight, indicating the mounting perils confronting humanity’s survival.
Defense Budget Cuts Would Limit Raises and Close Bases
Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, New York Times – January 27, 2012
The Pentagon took the first major step toward shrinking its budget after a decade of war as it announced Thursday that it wanted to limit pay raises for troops, increase health insurance fees for military retirees and close bases in the United States.
