Monday Headlines

Democracy Protests Briefly Shut Down Government In Hong Kong Clashes in Hong Kong between pro-democracy protesters and police closed government offices and parliament briefly, but Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying said police would now take “resolute action,” reports Reuters.

“Some people have mistaken the police’s tolerance for weakness,” Leung told reporters. “I call for students who are planning to return to the occupation sites tonight not to do so.”

While they closed down the government, some democracy leaders consider it a failure.

“In terms of paralyzing the government headquarters, it worked for half a day. But overall, it’s a failure. We could see even though we have occupied some places that it could quickly be cleared by police violently,” Alex Chow, the secretary general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, told reporters Monday.

Hagel’s Departure Signals Deeper Problems With Foreign Policy The Australian’s Michael Wesley says the departure of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is a sign “that something deeper is amiss in American foreign and defence policy” under Obama and that occasional uses of force, such as killing Osama bin Laden, “have covered a deeper passivity as regional crises have ­escalated.”

He says that Barack Obama’s “policy of waiting for the most opportune time to weigh in with US power sends a signal that the US has stepped back from leadership. In the world’s three key strategic arenas – Asia, Europe and the Middle East – this has allowed dangerous challenges to stability and order to evolve to levels where potentially they can no longer be checked.”

A New Framework For The New Weapons Of Warfare
As the use of drones become increasingly commonplace, the Global Policy Journal looks at the need to devise a new legal framework for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).