Fu combines diplomatic style and economic savvy.  She answered nine questions during a news conference, ranging from tensions with Japan to the military budget.  When replying to a question about “fully-covered budget management”, a comprehensive framework to review and supervise the government’s budget and spending at all levels, Fu was concerned whether reporters were familiar with the term and explained it to them.  She also allowed an old friend from CNN to ask a question but jokingly told him to pose “a mild one”.  Article

The fiery crash of a sightseeing balloon that killed 19 tourists has cast a further pall over this city of ancient temples and tombs, already perhaps the hardest hit by Egypt’s two-year drop in tourism, which has left hotels here empty and residents desperate for income.

Some connected to the tourist trade in Luxor, a city utterly dependent on foreign visitors to survive, were seething with anger Wednesday at the country’s Islamist president for his silence over the crash.

Mohammed Morsi has yet to publicly speak about the balloon crash in which 19 tourists were killed. Some here took that not just as insensitivity to the victims’ families but as indifference to the vital tourism trade. Article

Cartoon courtesy Doaa Eladl

Inevitably, climate change has risen up the agenda – not least because although the region is not a main contributor of the emissions causing global warming, it is likely to be a disproportionately affected by them. Estimates suggest the region has so far generated only about 4-6% of global emissions, yet it could suffer annual damage of a $100 billion by 2050r of due to declines in agricultural yields, the disappearance of glaciers, floods, droughts, and other problems caused by global warming.  Article

What are the ingredients of Fischer’s success?  Fischer, 69, has spent his entire life as a witness to the extent to which politicians, not economists, dictate economic decisions. And after achieving most of his goals during his term in office, now he’s looking for a new challenge.  What interests him? Over the past years his name has come up as a possible candidate to succeed Shimon Peres as Israel’s president, but Peres isn’t going anywhere and Fischer has convinced everyone who has inquired that he isn’t interested in the position. Close associates of the governor, however, say his real dream lies elsewhere: He wants to be Israel’s foreign minister.  This is an interesting proposition: Fischer has a better international reputation than any other Israeli and would be welcome anywhere he chooses to go throughout the world. He truly believes that he could accomplish things no previous foreign minister has been capable of, including advancing the peace process.   Article

Foreign Affairs has a profound article on how the west went wrong in the Middle East.  Since the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohamed Morsy, was elected president in June, the Brotherhood’s only real “consultation” has been with the Egyptian military, which the Brotherhood persuaded to leave power by ceding substantial autonomy to it under the new constitution. Among other undemocratic provisions, this backroom deal yielded constitutional protection for the military’s separate court system, under which civilians can be prosecuted for the vague crime of “damaging the armed forces.”

The past two days in Egypt looked at times like a slow-motion repeat of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak two years ago: the marches, the gas, the shouted demands to topple the regime, and a miscalculated response by the president (Mr Morsi took to Facebook and Twitter to express his condolences to the families of those killed). Hard-nosed Suez, where the first demonstrator was killed in 2011, again provided the spark. Protesters ripped down police shacks and set government buildings alight. The police killed ten of those protesting.Article

Cartoon courtesy Doaa El Adi

The US Secretary of Defense has said women are combat ready.  Is combat what we have always wanted?  Article

Park will take office for a mandatory single, five-year term in February and will face an immediate challenge from a hostile North Korea and have to deal with an economy in which annual growth rates have fallen to about 2 percent from an average of 5.5 percent in its decades of hyper-charged growth.  Park is unmarried and has no children, saying that her life will be devoted to her country.  Article