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Wednesday's global agenda: Defense spending on House floor, CIA renditions in European court
Your morning global affairs speed-read
The defense spending bill for FY 2013 hits the House floor Wednesday night. Controversial provisions include the drawdown from Afghanistan after 2014 and restrictions on the new START nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia as well as a provision calling for a missile-defense system on the East Coast.
President Obama on Tuesday threatened to veto the bill over some of those provisions and the fact that the bill is $8 billion above the Budget Control Act spending caps.
War on terror: Europe's top human-rights court today begins to hear for the first time testimony from an alleged victim of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program in a case that could create tensions with the United States. Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen, is suing Macedonia for allegedly collaborating with the CIA in his abduction.
El-Masri says he was arrested at a Macedonian border crossing in 2003 and flown to Afghanistan, where he says he was tortured for four months before the United States released him. After realizing they had the wrong person, El-Masri says, the CIA dropped him on a hill in Albania to make his way home to Germany. The American Civil Liberties Union has more on the European Court of Human Rights hearing here.
Also this afternoon, the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control examines the drug trade in West Africa.
The House also has a slew of hearings and markups slated for today:
• The House Natural Resources Committee takes up legislation calling for more domestic production of so-called “rare earth” minerals in the face of China's near-monopoly on the vital elements for producing electronics and other products. (H.R. 4402)
• The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on trade holds a hearing on promoting tourism in the United States.
• The House Small Business Committee examines U.S. trade strategy and “what's next for small business exporters?”
• The House Financial Services Committee's trade panel looks at U.S. access to China's financial services market in the wake of last week's Federal Reserve decision to allow a Chinese bank to take over branches in the United States.
• The House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia holds a hearing on U.S. interests in South Asia in a time of economic and political change. The State Department's Robert Blake and USAID's Nisha Desai are slated to testify.
• And the Oversight subcommittee examines the latest with Iraq's Ashraf Iranian refugee camp. The hearing comes as the State Department is considering delisting Iran's Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MeK, from its list of terrorist groups, in part to reward the dismantling of Camp Ashraf.
El Salvador: The Washington Office on Latin America examines the U.S.-El Salvador partnership with Ambassador Francisco Atschul.
What you might have missed on Global Affairs:
Report urges support for UN agencies struggling with Mali's worst human-rights crisis in 50 years
Renditioned Libyan rebel to form political party
Lawmaker calls for peace talks between deceased Arafat, comatose Sharon
Lawmakers spar over UN funding at China human-rights hearing
Lawmaker forces official to meet with wife of American imprisoned in Vietnam during hearing
