Morning Brief, Friday, December 14

This just in: Major League Baseball is rife with steroid abuse. Asia JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images Negotiators at the U.N. climate conference Bali are working overtime to nail down wording for a final statement, though there are late-breaking signs that the clash between the EU and the United States over binding emissions targets may be easing. ...

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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon checks the time as he waits for a meeting with Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd before the start of the high-level segment of the UN Climate Change Conference 2007 in Nusa Dua, on Bali island, 12 December 2007. Australia's new prime minister, Rudd, handed over papers ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, leaving the United States as the only advanced economy outside the UN climate treaty. Rudd handed the ratification documents to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a ceremony at a climate change conference on the Indonesian island of Bali that is thrashing out a framework for curbing greenhouse gases beyond 2012. AFP PHOTO/Jewel SAMAD (Photo credit should read JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

This just in: Major League Baseball is rife with steroid abuse.

This just in: Major League Baseball is rife with steroid abuse.

Asia

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Negotiators at the U.N. climate conference Bali are working overtime to nail down wording for a final statement, though there are late-breaking signs that the clash between the EU and the United States over binding emissions targets may be easing.

Business confidence is dropping in Japan.

The pope did not, contrary to expectations, grant an audience to the Dalai Lama during the latter’s visit to Italy.

Europe

Inflation in the eurozone climbed to 3.1 percent in November, the highest figure in six years.

British PM Gordon Brown’s “scheduling conflict” with the EU Treaty signing ceremony appears to have backfired.

In a leaked proposal slammed as “indecent” by Serbia’s foreign minster, the EU hinted that Serbia would be granted quicker accession if only it relented on Kosovo. 

Middle East

The Inspector General for Iraq is being inspected by the FBI for wasteful spending and unauthorized monitoring of e-mail. Payback time?

Referring to Republicans and Iraq, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “They like this war. They want this war to continue.”

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is going back to school.

Lebanese military officers called for unity at the funeral for a top general who was assassinated by a car bomb earlier this week.

Elsewhere

Zimbabwe’s ruling party chose… drumroll… Robert Mugabe as its candidate for the upcoming presidential election in March.

Around 4,500 foreign terrorists” have flocked to Somalia, according to a Somali government official.

A federal jury in Miami convicted zero of seven defendants who were accused of plotting to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to outlaw waterboarding, a tactic that the CIA says it has already abandoned. The White House has nonetheless threatened a veto.

Today’s Agenda

  • Pakistan is poised to lift its state of emergency tomorrow, but critics have their doubts.
  • U.S. President George W. Bush welcomes Peru’s Alan Garcia to the White House.

Yesterday on Passport

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