President Obama attends the NATO summit in Lisbon, returning with agreements on Afghanistan, a new strategic concept and missile defense. An unlikely partnership has developed between Qatar and Oregon. And a Queens, New York, neighborhood has a distinctly Egyptian flavor.
NATO’s Afghan Plan
President Obama has joined NATO allies in a formal agreement to transfer security control of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces to Afghan forces starting in 2011. “My goal is to make sure that, by 2014, we have transitioned, Afghans are in the lead,” says Obama, above with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at a meeting at the White House
For NATO, a New Strategic Plan
The 28-nation NATO alliance has adopted a vision and an approach to collective security for the 21st century that considers such wide-ranging threats as terrorism, cyberattacks and missile attacks. At a Lisbon press conference, President Obama, above, says “the new Strategic Concept that we are embracing shows that NATO is fully united about the way forward and committing to addressing the full range of security challenges of this century.”
Missile Defense for NATO
NATO alliance leaders agree to develop a missile defense capability that will cover all NATO European territory and populations, as well as the United States. “This important step forward builds on the new Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defense that I announced for the United States last year,” President Obama says at the NATO Summit in Lisbon.
From Oregon to Qatar
The U.S. state of Oregon and the Middle East nation of Qatar are working together to find sustainable solutions to shared problems faced in arid climates.
“Little Egypt,” in New York
So many Egyptian-, Lebanese- and Moroccan-owned shops and restaurants line Steinway Street in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York, that the area is known as Little Egypt. Astoria has long been a neighborhood of immigrants adapting to their new country and Little Egypt typifies the growth of an American immigrant neighborhood. Left, an Egyptian baker prepares dough at the Ageba market.