The Iranian parliament votes to approve Marzieh-Vahid Dastjerdi as Minister of Health, making her the first female cabinet minister in the history of the Islamic republic. The parliament rejected two other women candidates put forward by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Members of a drug gang are suspected of executing 17 people at a drug rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, near the U.S. border. Mexican drug gangs have recently started targeted rehabilitation centers that they say protect members of rival groups.

Tens of thousands of members of minority ethnic groups gather in the northwestern Chinese city of Urumqi to protest random syringe attacks against dozens of people. The attacks have raised ethnic tensions in a city where riots killed 197 mainly Han Chinese in early July.

Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis calls for early elections, which he says are needed to deal with fallout from the global financial crisis. The move comes just two years after 2007 elections brought Karamanlis to power.

Aghanistan’s presidential campaign concludes at midnight tonight. Afghans go to the polls to select their next leader on Thursday. The election will also determine over 3,000 provincial council seats.

The Mexican government replaces 1,100 custom officials with new officers who have undergone thorough background checks. The move is aimed at reducing corruption to stem the flow of illegal drugs into and out of the country.

The missing Russian cargo ship “Arctic Sea” is found 300 miles off the coast of Cape Verde with all 15 crew members alive. The disappearance has sparked speculation that the ship’s actual cargo is more valuable than the timber listed on its manifest.

An attack by Somali militants on a U.N. outpost in Southern Somalia is repelled. Three attackers were killed in what officials believe was an attempt to kidnap aid workers.

The U.S. Peace Corps suspends its volunteer program in Mauritania due to security concerns. It has been operating in the northwest African country since 1967.

As Typhoons Morakot and Etau continue to wreak havoc in Asia, nearly one million people are evacuated from China’s eastern coastal provinces, at least 13 are killed in western Japan, and hundreds are missing after landslides hit the village of Xialin in Taiwan.

President Barack Obama meets with Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Guadalajara, Mexico, for the forth annual summit of North American leaders. Major issues to be discussed include the economic crisis, the swine flu pandemic, the drug trade, climate change and immigration.

At least two civilians and three police officers are killed in Taliban attacks on government buildings near Kabul, just 10 days before Afghanistan’s elections, which members of the Taliban have vowed to disrupt.

In the ongoing battle in Swat Valley, troops continue to surround the Taliban after Pakistan officials reject a truce. Clashes continue in nearby towns amid an estimated 1.2 million displaced civilians.

The Sri Lankan army says it kills 11 Tamil Tiger rebels in an area that security forces cleared when fighting ended a week ago.

Mortars fired by Somalian insurgents at the presidential palace in Mogadishu miss their target, killing government soldiers and civilians near the compound.

Half a million people are displaced in the aftermath of Cyclone Aila in Bangladesh and India, and damage is surveyed in one of the world’s largest tiger reserves.

Mexican forces arrest 10 mayors and other officials in President Felipe Calderon’s home state of Michoacan. The operation targets politicians with ties to Mexico’s drug traffickers and organized crime networks that control much of the state. An adviser to the governor, and director of the Institute of Police are among those arrested.

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal of Nepal announces his resignation in response to President Ram Baran Yadav’s veto of the government’s decision to dismiss the army chief.

Militants use 2,000 civilians as human shields in Buner’s Pir Baba area in Pakistan. Ten militants and three soldiers are killed in the sixth day of fighting in Buner.

Mexico sends a plane to pick up Mexicans quarantined in China.  China sends a plane to pick up Chinese citizens in Mexico.

China orders officials to smoke cigarettes to increase local tax revenues.

Some Mexicans lighten the mood by decorating their face masks.

In the midst of the global financial crisis, annual May Day protests take place in cities across Europe, turning violent in Berlin and Istanbul.

Another 60 Taliban militants are killed on day four of fighting in Pakistan’s Buner district.

Pakistani officials say that Lower Dir district is now under the control of security forces, after 40 Taliban militants were killed and nearly 55,000 people displaced in two days of clashes.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai announces his bid for re-election.

The Sri Lankan government says that will stop using air strikes and heavy weapons against Tamil Tiger rebels, and will focus on civilian rescue operations.

President Obama visits Mexico today, the first stop on a weekend trip to Trinidad and Tobago for the fifth Summit of the Americas, where he will meet many heads of state from the Western Hemisphere for the first time.

The stop in Mexico will be short, but the two countries have much to discuss. Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón will focus on the drug-related violence that has caused more than 10,000 Mexican deaths in the past three years and may be inching across the border. Calderón has made combating Mexican drug cartels a primary goal of his administration, committing 45,000 troops to the cause across the country. President Obama has also responded to the escalating situation: last month he confirmed the U.S. commitment to the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion regional anti-drug package including $700 million to support Mexico’s armed forces, increase U.S. security along the border, curb the flow of arms and money from the U.S. to Mexican cartels, and slow the U.S. demand for illegal drugs. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Mexico last month, she surprised many by recognizing that the U.S. shares some responsibility for Mexico’s drug cartel problem.

While Secretary Clinton’s comments were certainly welcome in Mexico, many people there, including former President Vicente Fox, are now looking for concrete plans instead of just rhetoric. “No more words, no more plans, no more little pats on the back like I used to get for six years,” Fox said in an interview earlier this week. “You have to act, and it’s time to act.” Some Mexican officials have said that much of the support promised when the Merida Initiative was initially announced in 2008 has not yet arrived. The lack of anticipated equipment has hampered their efforts.

Another likely topic of discussion will be economic issues. The Mexican economy has been hit hard not only by drug violence, but also the recession in the U.S. Mexican remittances and exports are declining. Trade issues jumped to the forefront last month, when the U.S. Congress halted a program that allowed Mexican truckers to operate freely in the U.S., saying that some of the operators did not meet U.S. safety standards. Mexico saw the move as a violation of NAFTA, and responded by adding tariffs to about 90 U.S. products entering Mexico.

From Mexico, Obama will be off to Trinidad. Economic discussions will no doubt continue there, alongside discussions about recent developments in U.S. policy towards Cuba. Obama’s appearance at the summit has the potential to upstage whatever Hugo Chavez has planned, but the competition for the spotlight could be fierce.

Seventeen people are killed in Maoist attacks on polling centers during today’s general elections in India.

At least sixteen Iraqi soldiers are killed in a suicide bombing on an airbase in Anbar province.

President Obama heads to Mexico to meet with his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderón ahead of this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.

Weapons seized by the Mexican Policia Federal Preventiva under the Merida Initiative

Buzzwords appears each Friday on the Wide Angle blog and breaks down the lingo, jargon and hot topics of the world’s headlines.

Erin Chapman

In the last 15 months, over 7,000 lives have been claimed in Mexico’s drug-related violence. U.S. pundits are calling Mexico a ‘failed state.’ The administration’s new pick for ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual is, in fact, an expert in failed states. After years of ineffectual policy, how will the U.S help its neighbor pull out of this downward spiral? And lo, Obama smiled and sent unto the troubled state his only appointed Clinton….

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Mexico this week and vowed to help speed the delivery of equipment promised in the Merida Initiative, a security partnership between the U.S., Mexico and other Central American nations to combat drug trafficking and organized crime.

The Merida Initiative was named for the city where ex-President George W. Bush and current Mexican President Felipe Calderon met in 2007 to discuss expanded counternarcotics efforts in the region. (Honestly, isn’t it a bit surprising there aren’t any initiatives named the Crawford Ranch Initiative?) In the months after their meeting, officials from both governments met to hash out the details of a three year, $1.4 billion aid package to be spent mostly on training and equipment. One portion of the Merida Initiative aims to support U.S. and Mexican efforts against drug, human and arms trafficking. The other portion covers the rest of Central America, supporting its capacity to cut off drugs and arms trafficking, aiding anti-gang efforts and strengthening judicial reform.

In July 2008, Congress approved $465 million for the first phase of Merida. In December, the U.S. signed a letter of agreement with the Mexican government obligating $197 million of that total for counternarcotics programs. Mexico receives the lion’s share of funding — more than all the other countries combined — and the largest part of that aid goes toward equipment for the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies — i.e. helicopters, scanners, x-ray vans and canine training (hopefully including bi-lingual “Don’t pet me, I’m working / No me acaricie, estoy trabajando” jackets for the dogs).

Mexican officials, as well as their U.S. counterparts, have complained of lag times on delivery for this equipment, but Clinton seemed to promise re-focused American attention on the plan. While President Obama has expressed support for the Merida Initiative, escalating levels of violence in Mexico have not shown any quick successes with its implementation and some critics question whether sufficient benchmarks have been set to measure progress.

Sources: Congressional Research Service, LA Times, Washington Post, U.S. Dept. of State

The Czech goverment looses a vote of no confidence, midway through the country’s E.U. presidency.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visits Egypt despite the warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court.

North Korea says it will break off talks on ending its nuclear weapons program if the U.S. pushes for sanctions after a North Korean satellite launch planned for the first week in April.

Israel’s prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu reaches a coalition agreement with Labor party leader Ehud Barak.

Organizers call off a peace conference in Johannesburg after the South African government refuses the a visa for the Dalai Lama.

Serbia marks the 10th anniversary of the start of NATO’s bombing campaign.

Amnesty International reports that the number of executions worldwide doubled last year, with Asian countries putting more people to death than the rest of the world combined, and China leading the way.

Twenty prisoners die in a gang fight amidst a rising wave of drug-related crime in Mexico’s most violent city, Cuidad Juarez.

Visiting the West Bank, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticizes Israel’s plans to demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, and says she pressed Israel to open border crossings to Gaza.

In an uplifting address, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown tells the U.S. Congress: “now more than ever, the world wants to work with you.”

Our world today is so interconnected that the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the U.S. has led to a global financial crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. Here’s a round-up of how the countries around the world are dealing with the economic meltdown.

Europe

The 15-country eurozone is officially in recession for the first time since its formation in 1999. From French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s newly announced economic summit to Iceland’s collective sigh of relief over a bailout (the International Monetary Fund’s first loan to Western Europe since Britain got a helping hand in 1976), Europe is struggling with its own brand of turmoil as the financial crisis tears through the continent.

But in the German cities of Eisenach and Bochum, residents are feeling a special empathy for the U.S. Both are home to Opel car plants, shut down as parent company General Motors pleads with Capitol Hill for a loan.

Opel has approached the German government in an attempt to secure liquidity should GM go bankrupt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to consider a loan, but immediately faced resistance even within her own party from lawmakers concerned that funds might find their way back to Detroit to prop up the ailing American parent company. All this comes at an inopportune time for Opel. Their Insignia model just won the title of European Car of the Year for 2009 — the first time in 22 years that a GM car has taken top honors. Perhaps the Insignia is a bit more stylish than 1987’s Opel Omega…

As the head of Europe’s second largest economy, French President Sarkozy announced a $25 billion investment fund yesterday. The bailout is part of a plan launched last month aimed at protecting French companies from foreign take-overs. Despite payback clauses and caps placed on executive pay, the bailout has angered France’s powerful unions who are staging massive strikes this week in air and rail travel, and postal and telecom services.

Sarkozy, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the E.U., has been so vocal about the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and the necessity for better market regulation, that The Economist semi-jokingly questions whether the global financial crisis has turned him into a “closet socialist.” Sarkozy was instrumental in arranging the recent G-20 summit, but returned from Washington disappointed by its outcome. On Tuesday, he announced that he and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will co-host another meeting of world leaders and financial experts in January 2009 in Paris to continue looking for ways out of the crisis.

In 2001, two-fifths of Turkey’s banks failed after an irresponsible lending spree. Taking over the banks and restructuring them cost the state a crippling 30 percent of GDP and plunged the economy into a deep recession, triggering one of the I.M.F.’s biggest-ever loans. At the G-20 summit in Washington last weekend, Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayyip Erdogan announced his country may be close to reaching an agreement to receive yet another emergency loan from the I.M.F. But Prime Minister Erdogan has warned the Turkish business community not to expect a government bailout this time: “Nobody should expect everything from the government. It’s not like the government is going to inject cash into the emptied safes of companies. Let me put it clearly, such a thing is out of the question.”

Asia

After months of avoiding the global financial crisis and years of excess money in the banks, Japan has also slipped into a recession. The world’s second largest economy has seen a recent appreciation of the yen and consequently, a decline in the demand for exports, especially among its most loyal customers. In the United States, the world’s largest auto market, the price of Japanese vehicles is rising and sales are dropping. Japanese car manufacturers Honda, Nissan and Toyota are reporting steep declines in sales and profits. Sony is also predicting a 59 percent plunge in profits due to deteriorating sales of gadgets and flat-screen TVs.

Prime Minister Taro Aso announced a $51 billion stimulus package last month, which included 2 trillion yen ($20.3 billion) in special benefits to all households. Aso hoped to encourage domestic consumption by distributing $600 to each family of four. Some economists predict that the worst is yet to come in Japan, but the bleak outlook hasn’t stopped Japanese consumers from snatching up an entire stock of diamond-encrusted mobile phones. Studded with 537 diamonds – a total of 18.34 carats – and a price tag of 13 million yen ($134,000 dollars), the line of 10 phones sold out within three days.

South Koreans have begun to fear a repeat of their 1997-1998 economic collapse, when the I.M.F. had to step in with a $58 million bailout. The government of South Korea responded to the current downturn by setting up a $30 billion currency swap with the Federal Reserve of the United States, which was designed to alleviate the pressure on the country’s banks. On November 14^th, China and Japan also agreed on a currency swap with South Korea, contributing $4 billion and $15 billion respectively.

Despite a slowdown in garment exports and tourists, Cambodian Prime Minister Sun Hen sees the silver lining. At a summit with Thailand and Vietnam earlier this month, Sen said, “’The rich people in Europe, the buyers in America, will not buy expensive clothes produced in Europe anymore but the cheaper goods produced in Cambodia and Vietnam.”

In the first weeks of the global financial crisis, China — the world’s fastest growing economy and largest holder of foreign-exchange reserves — was hopeful the slowdown would pass it by. But figures released in mid-October showed growth dipping to its lowest in five years, down from 11.9 percent last year to 9 percent this quarter, confirming that no nation is immune. With foreign exports and investments shrinking, Chinese unemployment is on the rise, and could reach up to 2.7 million laid-off workers by January 2009. Time Magazine calls it “China’s worst nightmare,” due to the labor unrest that might result. This week, Chinese authorities issued an order to companies in the big manufacturing regions of Shandong and Hubei provinces: they must now seek government consent in order to fire more than 40 people at a time. To shore up domestic growth and market confidence, on November 9 President Hu Jintao announced a 2-year $586 billion stimulus package — four times as large as America’s current bailout plan — focused on tax reform, increased spending on education, health, and housing, and major infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, airports, and the power grid.

China suffered from two major recessions in the past 30 years, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen uprising in 1989 and during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, when it last adopted a big stimulus plan. The Economist argues that this time China might “genuinely avoid a hard landing: the underlying economy, while far from perfect, is in better shape, and the government has more room to boost its spending… [M]ost economists think the stimulus package will be enough to keep growth at 7.5-8 percent for the year as a whole. If so, of the world’s eight biggest economies, China will be the only one to enjoy any growth next year.” Chinese consumers may help keep the rest of us afloat.

As the West increasingly relies on China to help it weather the storm, geo-political compromises may be in the offing. The U.K. is rumored to have secured a Chinese donation to the I.M.F. by agreeing to reverse its century-old position on Tibet: since late October, Briatin no longer recognizes Tibet as an autonomous entity but rather as a part of the People’s Republic of China.

The Middle East and Central Asia

Iranian hardliners have hailed the economic crisis as divine punishment for the perceived greed and corruption of the West and its allies. “The oppressors and the corrupt will be replaced by the pious and believers,” according to Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sees the downturn as signaling “the end of capitalism.”

He’s not the only one to see this crisis as a turning point in the culture war between East and West. Dubai’s once-booming economy has been hit hard, but some see the downturn as a chance to save the local culture. Traditional Bedouin culture has been all but lost in Dubai’s rush to become an international center of business, media and tourism. “The city needs to slow down and relax,” says Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at United Arab Emirates University. “It’s good for the identity of our country.”

The U.S. is expected to spend close to $200 billion on the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year alone. With the economic crisis wreaking havoc in the homeland, something has to give. Peter Beinart, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations says that “the economic environment is making a speedy drawdown of U.S. troops [in Iraq] more likely.” That might sound like good news to some. But experts warn that the financial crisis might fuel instability in fragile nations from the Middle East to Pakistan. On November 15th, a struggling Pakistan reluctantly accepted a $7.6 billion loan from the I.M.F. But still, there is fear that economic troubles will hinder Pakistan’s ability to fight the Taliban insurgency in the country’s tribal regions.

Africa

Last month, former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan said that we cannot use the global financial crisis as “an excuse for inaction” in combating poverty and food shortages in Africa. In times of financial crisis governments often renege on promises of financial aid. In fact, the U.N. Food Agency reported that only a tenth of 22 billion euros in food and agriculture assistance pledged to the U.N. for 2008 has actually been paid.

But there are some who feel the time is ripe for Africa to excel as an economic force. Kuseni Dlamini, the South African head of the multinational mining firm Anglo American, said that now is the “great era of opportunity for Africa to rise and shine in the global scheme of things and be met as an economic giant.” Kuseni cited Botswana as a “shining example” of a country that has managed its natural resources (diamonds) in a responsible way, which has delivered long term benefits in education, infrastructure and healthcare to the country. John Simon, U.S. ambassador to the African Union has called Africa “the new frontier” in the global economy.

According to Antoinette Sayeh, director of the I.M.F.’s African Department, growth in sub-Saharan Africa, the continent’s poorest region, will remain strong. Sub-Saharan Africa experienced one of its highest growth rates in decades in 2007, growing at a rate of 6.5 percent. In the midst of the global financial crisis, the I.M.F. projects that growth in sub-Saharan Africa will fall by only half a percent in 2008 and 2009. However, Sayeh warns that sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth could weaken with a lower inflow of capital, i.e. through foreign aid, and a reduction in commodity pricing. The I.M.F. has also identified eight sub-Saharan African countries — Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia – as having enough growth and investment to be considered emerging markets.

Latin America

With oil dropping below $50 a barrel, the Venezuelan economy may be at risk. More than 90 percent of export revenue and more than half of the government’s budget derives from oil. With these economic risks come political risks for a government whose extensive social programs are funded with oil revenues. Venezuela holds regional elections on Sunday, November 23, and economic troubles could reduce outspoken President Hugo Chavez’s hold on power. Among other challenges, Chavez allies will have to compete with Chavez’s ex-wife, Marisabel Rodriguez (she has since married her tennis coach).

Like Venezuela, Mexico relies heavily on oil revenues. The country also relies on remittances sent home by Mexican migrants abroad. Both have declined in response to the international financial crisis. In August, the collapse of the U.S. housing market (which employs many Hispanic immigrants in construction jobs) and increased illegal immigration raids contributed to a 12 percent drop in remittances, the largest monthly drop on record. Fortunately, September figures were more optimistic. Mexico receives the third-largest amount of remittances worldwide, and receives by far the largest amount coming from migrants based in the U.S. Interestingly, the decline in remittances has not been seen (pdf) in other Latin American countries that rely on them.

Mexico is also strongly connected to U.S. investment, which could prove problematic in weathering the financial crisis. Colombia, perhaps the strongest U.S. ally in South America, is less entangled with investments, but will be affected now that U.S. banks are reducing loans to developing countries. In addition, a trade agreement that would open some areas of trade between Colombia and the U.S. could be threatened by the the recent U.S. election. One outcome of the 2008 U.S. election was the ascendance of legislators advocating “fair trade” platforms, as opposed to “free trade” platforms. President-elect Obama, for example, has advocated for stronger labor protections in the Colombia agreement, citing violence against Colombian labor leaders. President Bush and out-going Republicans, however, have pushed for the deal to be signed as soon as possible.

The Planet

There may be some surprise winners and losers in the financial crisis, but the outlook for the planet seems to teeter back and forth between the two poles. U.N. climate honcho Yvo de Boer fears renewable energies and conservation will suffer from sinking oil prices, while countries will spend less money on protecting the environment as they fork over cash to rescue banks. Validating his concerns, at a recent E.U. summit, some Eastern European countries talked about backing away from CO2 emissions targets, citing the expense. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi added, “We do not think that now is the time to be playing the role of Don Quixote, when the big producers of CO2, such as the United States or China, are totally against adherence to our targets.”

But what’s bad news for some may actually make climate change activists pleased. With high rates of unemployment and foreclosure, populations are commuting less and shifting away from areas of suburban sprawl. Until the economic downturn, California was not set to meet its ambitious and trend-setting greenhouse gas emissions target. Now it seems as though they’re back on track. Less consumer demand likely translates into lower energy use – fewer road trips, fewer flights and a greater willingness to utilize public transportation. And, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, “One silver lining of the financial crisis is that investment decisions may not be as short-term as they have been.” Renewable energy and green technology projects might attract investors as safer bets for the long term.

WIDE ANGLE has also reported on the economic crisis in Ireland and Argentina.