The world in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We want to change

this whole setting.

The Brotherhood hijacked the revolution.”

Raafat Magdi,

an engineer who joined the protests against

Egypt’s Islamist president Article, 1AIn Israel, Livni

forms new party

JERUSALEM - Calling herself “an answer to the contention that there is no one to vote for,” Tzipi Livni, Israel’s centrist former foreign minister, returned to politics Tuesday after a sixmonth hiatus, heading a new party that she described as “an alternative, personal and ideological,” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I’ve come to fight for Israel,” Livni, 54, said in a 20-minute speech at the journalists’ union office in Tel Aviv. “I haven’t come to fight against but to fight for.”

Livni’s return, under the banner of “The Movement Led by Tzipi Livni,” immediately shook up the center of Israel’s political spectrum, with eight members of Parliament from the Kadima Party she helped found in 2005 bolting to join her, heralding its likely demise.

But in Israel’s coalition system of government, individual parties are less important than ideological blocs, and most recent polls have suggested that Livni and other existing opposition candidates will have a hard time taking enough votes from right-leaning and religious parties to prevent Netanyahu from winning a third term.

1st part of shelter

up at Chernobyl

CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR POWER STATION, Ukraine - Workers have raised the first section of a colossal arch-shaped structure that eventually will cover the exploded nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power station.

Project officials Tuesday hailed the raising as a significant step in a complex effort to clean up the consequences of the 1986 explosion, the world’s worst nuclear accident. Upon completion, the shelter will be moved on tracks over the building containing the destroyed reactor, allowing work to begin on dismantling the reactor and disposing of radioactive waste.

Suma Chakrabati, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is leading the project, called Tuesday “a very significant milestone, ... and an important step towards overcoming the legacy of the accident.”

The shelter, shaped like a gargantuan Quonset hut, will be 843 feet by 492 feet when completed and at its apex will be higher than the Statue of Liberty.

Colombian rebel

upbeat on talks

HAVANA - A senior commander of Colombia’s main rebel group said Tuesday that days of intensive peace talks with the government are going well.

Jesus Santrich noted that negotiators from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the government, meeting in Havana, have already agreed to support a broad forum in Bogota in December to discuss agrarian development, which has been an issue in the class-based conflict.

“Up until now we have had good results,” Santrich said upon entering the seventh day of talks at a convention center in the Cuban capital. “There has been agreement. We are on the same wavelength.”

Participants say the forum agreement is significant because it means both sides have accepted a basic framework for the negotiationscentered around six themes including land reform, victim compensation, drug trafficking and reinsertion of the rebels into society.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 11/28/2012

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