Morning Brief, Monday, October 15

Asia

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Opening the Communist Party Congress, Chinese President Hu Jintao called for a peace agreement with Taiwan and for a continuation of modest reforms under one-party rule.

The New York Times published its third in a series of articles about China’s environmental pollution called “Choking on Growth“.

Four members of a Sri Lankan human rights panel have quit in protest of government policies.

Middle East

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to prepare the ground for an upcoming November peace conference with Israel.

Turkey’s military chief warned of serious repercussions if the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Armenian Genocide Resolution.

Joshua Partlow and Amit R. Paley of the Washington Post pen a moving elegy for Salih Saif Aldin, a Post stringer who was assassinated on the job in Iraq.

Europe

A former Russian diplomat stands accused of laundering money during his tenure as head of a U.N. financial advisory committee.

Steven Lee Myers looks at Rice and Defense Secretary Bob Gates’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and finds them “civil, but not constructive“. 

Of all EU countries, Sweden does the most to integrate its immigrants, a new study has found. 

Elsewhere

The World Bank should focus more on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, an internal study has found.

The Nobel Prize in economics goes to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson “for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory”.

Joined by a serenading Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro appeared live on Cuban radio and television for the first time since the Cuban leader fell ill.

Today’s Agenda

• Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit Tehran, and even death threats won’t keep him away.
• Fox Business channel launches today.
• The Airbus 380 arrives in Singapore.
• EU foreign ministers are meeting in Lisbon to coordinate policies toward Burma, Chad, and Zimbabwe.