PACIFIC ISLAND NATION ESTABLISHES TIES WITH BREAKAWAY ABKHAZIA A new player has emerged in the roiling political theater of the Caucasus: the tiny, destitute Pacific island nation of Nauru, which on Tuesday became the fourth country to formally establish diplomatic relations with Abkhazia, effectively recognizing its sovereignty. The announcement comes 15 months after Russia began lobbying its allies to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the separatist territories at the center of its 2008 war with Georgia. PAKISTAN IS SAID TO BE FAILING IN FIGHT AGAINST TALIBAN The Pakistani military has seized nearly all of the former Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, but militants who fled are still able to wage deadly attacks deep inside Pakistan's heartland from new hide-outs, a U.S. official in Islamabad said Tuesday. By striking repeatedly in recent weeks with seeming impunity, the Pakistani Taliban are winning a propaganda war, the official said, by conveying a reach and strength that may be greater than the group's real capacities. U.S. SAID READY TO SELL ARMS TO TAIWAN The Obama administration will proceed with arms sales to Taiwan despite recent protests by Chinese officials, said Raymond Burghardt, is chairman of the American Institute in Taipei, the de facto U.S. Embassy in Taiwan. He said Tuesday that sales of arms to Taiwan were consistent with what White House officials have been saying was President Barack Obama's policy. 'No one should be surprised when we move forward with them,' he said. CAR BOMBS STRIKE 3 BAGHDAD SITES NEAR GREEN ZONE A series of car bombs exploded in central Baghdad on Tuesday morning near the Green Zone, government ministries and the Iranian Embassy, killing four people and wounding at least 14 others. One explosion occurred near the Foreign Ministry, which had been damaged by a bombing in August. Another bomb was detonated near the Immigration Ministry, and a third across a street from the Iranian Embassy where Defense Ministry officials park their vehicles. INDIA WILL PASS CHINA IN POPULATION IN 2025, U.S. ESTIMATES India will become the world's most populous country in 2025, surpassing China, where the population will peak one year later because of declining fertility, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections. The projected peak in China, 1.4 billion people, will be lower than previously estimated and that it will occur sooner. With the fertility rate declining to fewer than 1.6 births per woman in this decade from 2.2 in 1990, China's overall population growth rate has slowed to 0.5 percent annually. India's 1.4 percent growth rate is being driven by a fertility rate of 2.7 births per woman. PROPOSAL ON CLIMATE CHANGE Negotiators at the climate-change conference in Copenhagen have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests and in some cases other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change. Forests are efficient absorbers of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. Rain forest destruction, which releases the carbon dioxide stored in trees, is estimated to account for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. PAKISTANI COURT APPROVES ARREST OF 5 AMERICANS A Pakistani court formally approved the arrests of the five young American men from Virginia on Tuesday, according to Pakistani authorities, and allowed 10 more days for their questioning on suspicions that they had been seeking training to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan. AT LEAST 8 DIE IN AFGHANISTAN HOTEL BOMBING A suicide car bomber struck outside a Kabul hotel popular with foreigners on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding 40 others. The explosion occurred just outside the hotel and several buildings owned by Ahmed Zia Massoud, who may have been the target. Massoud is the brother of the guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who battled Soviet forces during the 1980s and was assassinated two days before 9/11. 