Neutrality

The new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission picked his first official fight Monday, and it's a doozy. Four decades after engineers at UCLA demonstrated a rudimentary version of the Internet, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wants to develop new rules limiting what Internet service providers can do to the data traveling through their networks. His proposal drew polite but firm opposition from the phone and cable TV companies that are the dominant providers of broadband connections, which warned that such rules could chill innovation online.

The San Francisco 49ers are among the NFL's crown-jewel franchises. They have won 19 division titles and five NFC championships, and are 5-0 in Super Bowl appearances. But they also have a sore-thumb statistic. They haven't won a road playoff game in 24 years. That's right, other than neutral-site Super Bowls, their last postseason victory away from home was a 28-3 win over Chicago in the NFC title game at Soldier Field in January 1989. Joe Montana threw three touchdown passes, Jerry Rice caught two of them, and the Bears could generate no offensive heat on a 17-degree day. Chicago's backup quarterback at the time?

Swiss voters decide on Sunday whether they want to break with a policy of neutrality dating from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and join the 19-nation European Economic Area, a new trade organization seen as a first step for joining the European Community as a full-fledged member. Such a move could eventually force the mountain confederation of 26 semiautonomous cantons to give up its status as a tax haven.

BEIRUT - Rebel fighters and government forces on Thursday battled for control of two strategic airports in northern Syria, the loss of which would be a severe blow to President Bashar Assad's efforts to maintain a hold in the region. Fighting erupted around the international airport in Aleppo, Syria's commercial capital, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in London. The airport has been shut since Tuesday because it has been under attack by rebels seeking to cut off Assad's aerial supply route.

The Finns, who have kept the Soviet bear at bay for more than four decades with their peculiar brand of neutrality, may have written the book on foreign policy for their Eastern European neighbors who have broken free of Moscow's embrace. "What could be useful to them in our experience is the kind of confidence-building that has taken place between Finland and the Soviet Union," Aarni Karhilo, an undersecretary of state and Finland's former ambassador to Moscow, commented this week.

"For the outsider," wrote newspaper editor Fabien Dunand in a recent book marking the 700th anniversary of Switzerland's independence, "neutrality is as Swiss as chocolate." Along with towering mountains, verdant valleys, expensive watches, brimming banks and milk chocolate, the tradition of neutrality has defined Switzerland for the outside world since at least 1815, when it was first formally established at the Congress of Vienna.

Walking a tightrope of neutrality, Iranian authorities Friday began shipping food and medicine to the Iraqi people while discussing ways to induce their government to leave Kuwait. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati met separately with high-ranking Iraqi and French envoys in Tehran, the official Iranian news agency reported. Top diplomats from Algeria and Yemen were also in the capital, a convergence that has led to speculation that another peace effort is under way.

Allan Little, a veteran foreign correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corp., remembers the dread he felt in the summer of 1995 as ethnic Serb soldiers approached the Muslim town of Srebrenica. His editors called from London and asked what was going to happen. He predicted the worst, a massacre. "They will all die," Little told his bosses over the phone. But he did not go on the air and tell the world.

Sweden to Apply to Join European Community: Emphasizing that joining the 12-nation bloc would not compromise the country's neutrality, Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson said the end of the Cold War prompted the decision. He also cited a desire to avoid being closed out of trading with EC nations, Stockholm's most important export market.

A BOMB EXPLODED on a main international railway in western AUSTRIA, damaging a stretch of track that has been used to transport U.S. tanks from Germany to the Persian Gulf. The moving of the tanks has angered many Austrians who say it violates the country's neutrality. The bomb bent the rails and left a six-foot crater under the tracks 30 miles northeast of Innsbruck. A second, unexploded bomb was found on a parallel track and was defused.

McKenna Pope, the 13-year-old girl who petitioned toy maker Hasbro for an Easy-Bake oven suitable for both girls and boys, will get what she's been asking for. After meeting with the New Jersey girl at its Rhode Island headquarters Monday, Hasbro said it will offer a new black-and-silver oven design in fall 2013. The company said the prototype, which it showed to Pope, has been in development for 18 months and will debut at the New York Toy Fair in February. Since 1963, a dozen different Easy-Bake models have been introduced in colors including teal, green, yellow, silver, blue and purple, Hasbro said.

The 13-year-old New Jersey girl who started a petition for boy-friendly Easy-Bake ovens will meet Monday with Hasbro, the company that makes the kitchen toy. In a statement, Hasbro said it invited McKenna Pope and her family to make their case at its Pawtucket, R.I., headquarters as “a consumer centric company” would.   “Through the years, based on both market research and buying patterns, we have seen that the primary interest in the Easy-Bake Oven comes from girls,” the company said.

Major League Soccer tweaked its playoff format before this season, moving its championship game from a neutral site to the home field of the finalist with the best regular-season record. Still, the prospect of the Galaxy getting home field seemed unlikely when it entered the postseason with the eighth-best record among the 10 playoff teams. But after beating Vancouver in a wild-card game and upsetting top-seeded San Jose and Seattle in the next two rounds, the Galaxy finds itself right back where it ended last season: at the Home Depot Center playing Houston, the Eastern Conference wild-card winner, in the MLS Cup final Saturday.

JERUSALEM - Soon after the cease-fire took effect this week between Israel and Hamas, another truce ended: The agreement among candidates in Israel's upcoming elections not to campaign during the crisis. Analysts said it probably was too much to ask for the political cease-fire to last much longer. "The War has Started," said a front page headline in Friday's leading Yediot Aharonot newspaper, referring to the barely couched maneuvering for advantage. Some question whether there was ever a break in the politicking.

CAIRO - Egyptians rallied in cities across the country Friday to show solidarity with Palestinians and to support or criticize Egypt's new Islamist government, which has enlivened the Arab world with its diplomatic maneuvers and condemnation of Israel. President Mohamed Morsi has not stopped the fighting between Hamas and Israel, but he has emerged as a more aggressive and less neutral player than his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in last year's uprising. Morsi's engagement is a testament to the rising profile of Islamists in the region's political realignment.

JERUSALEM - As the war of words heats up regarding a possible Israeli military strike on Iran, now is the time to look at one of the key arguments used by those opposed to such an act of self-defense. Time and again we have heard the question "Why now?" asked whenever an Israeli prime minister must make a decision that placed our nation's very existence in jeopardy. Each time, our leaders knew to focus on the real question - "What is the alternative?" - and then go forward on the lonely path toward a more secure and free Israel.

Swiss citizens voted to keep their army as the best way of maintaining their nation's neutrality, even though the highly mobilized force has scarcely fired a shot in anger during its four centuries of existence. A proposal to abolish the army by the year 2000 was rejected by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Although it has only about 1,800 full-time military personnel, Switzerland can mobilize 625,000 trained soldiers in 48 hours--more, it says, than West Germany.

East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow, in a significant shift in policy, declared Sunday that neutrality is not necessarily a condition of German reunification. Speaking to West German television and Swiss TV on Sunday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Modrow said that his previous insistence on neutrality for a unified Germany is really a matter "for discussion."

Facing a backlash for its decision to charge some users for cellular FaceTime calls, AT&T defended its decision Wednesday, saying the move is not in violation of net neutrality rules. Last week, AT&T announced that only users on its new Mobile Share plan will be able to make free cellular FaceTime calls, a feature that will debut on Apple's iOS 6 operating system, which is expected to launch with the next iPhone in September. That decision effectively leaves out all of AT&T's customers as the network is yet to debut the Mobile Share plan, although that is expected to happen late this month.

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth in Britain have developed a new app that will color code your texts, tweets and emails, letting you know if the information they convey is good, bad or somewhere in between. The scientists call it "sentiment analysis" and it is essentially an algorithm designed to determine whether a mobile communication will make you happy -- "Hey, we can have dinner tonight!" -- or bummed -- "I am so angry at you!" -- or indifferent -- "I need you to pick up the kids at 5. " If the communique is positive, it will show up highlighted in green.