Word: easting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Perpetually stressed U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner—an East Asian Studies graduate from Dartmouth—may finally have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets (from Cornell) to help him out. Now it's up to the Senate to approve her, and we all know how long that takes...
...Although President Obama's Mideast envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, was in the region on Friday when the Peace Prize award was announced, it didn't help him cajole the parties back to the negotiating table. Far from anticipating an outbreak of peace, right now, in fact, the Middle East is bracing for the possibility that the escalation of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians - and the perceived failure of those Palestinian leaders aligned with U.S. peacemaking efforts - could ignite a new Palestinian intifada. And if a new confrontation does occur, it's a safe bet that there'll be voices...
...Nobel award has been universally acknowledged, not least by Obama himself, as premature. Some have argued - and the Committee's own statement suggested as much - that its purpose is to enhance the President's authority to press forward on his peace quest in the Middle East and beyond. In truth, however, the Nobel confers no recognized authority on the laureate, only attention - one gift President Obama most certainly does not need. But even if the award does nothing for Obama's ability to achieve his goals, some observers hope it will reinforce the President's will to press for peace...
Friday's Nobel Peace Prize award to President Barack Obama momentarily achieved that rare accord among the Middle East's feuding factions that has for so long been the holy grail of peacemakers. While the region's leaders, particularly those inclined to stay onside with the U.S., dutifully issued boilerplate acclamations, most of their citizens were united in a common skepticism - President Obama has raised expectations in his outreach to the Muslim world and his prioritization of settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, but thus far he has little progress to show for his efforts. (See TIME's Photoshop imaginings...
...change the atmosphere in the world in such a short time," said Israeli President Shimon Peres. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat made sure to convey his side's concerns in his own message congratulating Obama: "We hope that he will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East and achieve Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 border and establish an independent state on 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital." But beneath the veneer of formal congratulations, the Obama Nobel award is being viewed as an as yet undeserved laurel, as an embarrassment, by some even as an impediment...