Kim Jong-un attends North Korean military parade - The Guardian

Kim Jong-un and his father, Kim Jong-il, watch the military parade in Pyongyang. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian

Kim Jong-il's heir apparent joined his father at a massive military parade in Pyongyang today, his most public appearance since being named as North Korea's next leader.

Dressed in a dark blue civilian suit, Kim Jong-un sat next to his father on an observation platform at Kim Il-sung Plaza as tanks carrying rocket-propelled grenades and long-range missiles rolled by as part of celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the ruling Workers' party.

The event was broadcast live on state TV, giving North Koreans their first good look at the future leader. Days earlier, the world got a first glimpse of the son from photos published in the Rodong Sinmun newspaper.

There were cheers and some tears from North Koreans attending the parade. "Kim Jong-il! Protect him to the death!" "Kim Jong-il, let's unite to support him!" they chanted as the 68-year-old leader walked the length of the platform, appearing to limp slightly.

Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian

The parade was said to be the nation's largest ever, an impressive display of unity and military might for a country known for its elaborately staged performances.

Thousands of troops from every branch of North Korea's 1.2 million-strong military, as well as from naval officers' academies and military nursing schools, goose-stepped around the plaza to the accompaniment of a brass band.

Tanks and trucks loaded with Katyusha rocket launchers and grenades rolled past. They were dwarfed by the series of missiles that paraded by, each larger than the last and emblazoned with: "Defeat the US military. US soldiers are the Korean People's army's enemy."

Ri Yong Ho, chief of the general staff of the North Korean army, said at the event: "If the US imperialists and their followers infringe on our sovereignty and dignity even slightly, we will blow up the stronghold of their aggression with a merciless and righteous retaliatory strike by mobilising all physical means, including self-defensive nuclear deterrent force, and achieve the historic task of unification."

The parade was probably less about showing off its military might than about introducing the heir to the North Korean people and building up his image as the next leader, according to Baek Seung-joo, a North Korea analyst at South Korea's Korea Institute for Defence Analyses.

Kim Yong-hyun, an expert on North Korea at Seoul's Dongguk University, said: "The parade served as a sign that the military has loyalty to the successor."

A select group of media outlets was allowed into the country to cover the festivities, and were given front-row seats at the two events where the Kims appeared: a performance of the Arirang mass games spectacle yesterday, and today's military parade.

The question of who will take over leadership of the nuclear-armed nation has been a pressing one since Kim Jong-il reportedly suffered a stroke in 2008. . Kim Jong-un won his first military post with a promotion to general late last month, and was appointed to the Workers' party's central military commission and the central committee, strong signs he was being groomed to eventually succeed his father.

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UAE Scraps BlackBerry Ban While RIM Says Security Unchanged - Bloomberg

The United Arab Emirates will not suspend Research in Motion Ltd. ’s Blackberry service this month. Photographer: Jonathan Gainer/Bloomberg

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Betty Liu reports on the latest breaking news and top stories in today's Business Briefs. (Source: Bloomberg)

Research In Motion Ltd. averted a ban on its BlackBerry smartphone in the United Arab Emirates after the country’s phone regulator said the company’s messaging services now comply with local regulations.

“All BlackBerry services in the U.A.E. will continue to operate as normal,” the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, which had threatened to ban the service over security concerns, said in a statement on its website today. The regulator didn’t give further details of how the company and local wireless operators addressed the government’s concerns.

RIM said today it continues to follow the principles for working with government officials it laid out in an Aug. 12 statement and wouldn’t comment further on confidential regulatory matters. In that statement, RIM said it doesn’t do “special deals for specific countries” and there have been no changes to the security of its corporate e-mail system.

“Contrary to any rumors, the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers’ encryption keys,” RIM said in August.

RIM’s encryption technology has raised concerns in several countries that BlackBerry may be used for terrorist attacks or other illegal activity. The U.A.E. regulator’s decision, which averts a ban planned for Oct. 11, comes after Saudi Arabia canceled a planned shutdown of BlackBerry service and the Indian government said it would push back a deadline to suspend BlackBerry service as it works toward a solution.

Some Kind of Workaround?

“RIM has previously been clear that it would not change the architecture of the BlackBerry services to placate countries,” said Tony Cripps, an analyst with technology research firm Ovum in London. “We can only hypothesize that some kind of workaround has been agreed” to between the UAE and local carriers to monitor messages sent with the BlackBerry “at a point in the delivery process that is outside of RIM’s control,” he said.

RIM rose $1.44, or 3 percent, to $49.36 at 4:30 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock has dropped 27 percent this year.

The U.A.E. regulator said it wants to acknowledge RIM’s “positive engagement and collaboration.” The regulator didn’t say whether the deal allows it to monitor messages sent by BlackBerry users.

In a Sept. 24 interview, co-Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie said RIM can’t give governments access to corporate customers’ e-mail systems because only those customers -- not RIM -- hold the security codes for reading their employees’ BlackBerry messages.

“I’m not the keeper of that key, I don’t have that key,” he said. “If you want them to break open their servers, you’ve got to go to them.”

Indian Security Trial

Saudi Arabian authorities said Aug. 10 it wouldn’t impose a BlackBerry ban, citing the “positive development” in meeting the country’s monitoring needs. India’s government said Aug. 31 that it’s conducting a two-month test of a tracking system offered by Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM.

A ban would have hurt the image of the U.A.E., home to the business hub of Dubai, as place that is business-friendly, said Mohammed Ali Yasin, chief investment officer at CAPM Investments in Abu Dhabi.

“The fact that we are continuing with the services is important to say we are part of the world community,” he said.

The companies involved would have lost “significant business” if the ban had gone through, he said.

Encryption Technology

Emirates Telecommunications Corp., the U.A.E.’s biggest phone operator, known as Etisalat, and Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co., based in Dubai and owner of the Du brand, had introduced packages that would allow customers to replace BlackBerry devices with smartphones offering similar services.

Etisalat said in an e-mailed statement today that its alternative packages will no longer be available and that all its BlackBerry services will continue to operate as normal. Du said in a separate statement that service for both consumer and enterprise customers will function normally.

An Etisalat official who declined to be named said he did not know about any possible monitoring and referred questions to the regulator. “We only provide the service,” the official said. Calls to a Du official went unanswered today, the first day of the weekend in the U.A.E.

The U.A.E. set the Oct. 11 shutdown deadline in August after the regulator said the encryption technology didn’t comply with national-security laws for giving authorities access to electronic messages.

RIM has about 1.1 million users in India and a combined 1.2 million in the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia, according to estimates by RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky. The company has over 50 million subscribers globally.

To contact the reporters on this story: Zahraa Alkhalisi in Abu Dhabi at zalkhalisi@bloomberg.net; Hugo Miller in Toronto at hugomiller@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net

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America should fund Israeli settlers to leave - Financial Times

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By Diana Buttu

Published: October 10 2010 19:28 | Last updated: October 10 2010 19:28

The latest round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is already on shaky ground. At issue, once again, is Israel’s insistence that it can build and expand settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Its 10-month moratorium expired on September 26, and while Barack Obama, US president, said Israel should extend it – and according to some reports offered incentives including upgrades to Israel’s advanced weapons systems and an increase in the $3bn in annual aid for nothing beyond a 60-day extension – he, like his predecessors, has refused to insist on a total halt.

As a former adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, I witnessed numerous failures in the peace process because of this issue. Now it threatens to derail the process again. A statement from the Arab League on Friday supported the right of the Palestinians to withdraw from talks, while even a temporary extension of the moratorium will only delay briefly the moment at which this problem returns. So a longer-term solution is needed; one in which the US provides much stronger incentives to encourage settlers to leave.

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