Wednesday’s global agenda: China’s human-rights abuses under fire

In other news: 

{mosads}Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks across Iraq Monday that killed 115 people. [Associated Press]. The terror group is also seen as having an increasingly lethal role in next-door Syria. [The New York Times]

Meanwhile, President Bashar Assad’s forces for the first time used warplanes to bomb the country’s largest city, Aleppo, an escalation some see as a sign of growing desperation. [The Washington Post]. 

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N.’s statement that attacks in Damascus could speed up U.N. action represents a “direct endorsement of terrorism” and a “sinister position,” Russia‘s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow. [Russia Today] 

Egypt‘s president, Mohammed Morsi, has chosen a U.S.-educated irrigation minister with no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood to be his first prime minister. [McClatchy Newspapers]

U.S. government contract disputes are holding up the purchase of planes that are supposed to equip Afghanistan‘s fledgling Afghan air force. [The Wall Street Journal]

The proliferation of U.S. drones over Somalia is endangering air traffic and could violate an arms embargo, the United Nations says in a new report. [The Washington Post]

What you might have missed on Global Affairs: 

Romney calls for a special counsel to probe national security leaks

Lawmakers school anti-hunger groups on politics of foreign aid

McCain calls China‘s moves on disputed islands ‘unnecessarily provocative’

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