Globe Trot: India celebrates Microsoft's new CEO

INDIA:Yesterday’s naming of Satya Nadella, born in Hyderabad, as Microsoft’s new chief executive led above the fold in nearly every major newspaper in India. “India makes a power point,” read the Times of India’s front page headline. But not everyone is cheering. Citing other India-born tech and science geniuses, FirstPost laments, “All of them flowered only because they left India, and not because they were Indians per se.”

PANAMA: Work to expand the Panama Canal has halted, placing 10,000 construction jobs in jeopardy. Disputed cost overruns leaning toward $1.6 billion are behind the stoppage, led by members of the consortium heading up the project. When complete, the expansion will allow the latest heavy container ships through the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

IRAN: UN atomic agency chief Yukiya Amano intends to question Iranian officials during upcoming talks about small amounts of a rare radioactive material that can help trigger an atomic explosion. Production of polonium-210, in conjunction with beryllium has fired suspicion that Iran worked on designing a nuclear warhead.

MIDDLE EAST: A flood of weapons into the Middle East is upending the way defense analysts traditionally handicap the region. They believe Israel maintains its “qualitative military edge,” or QME, but Russian missiles in Hezbollah hands, Saudi infusions in Iraq, U.S. helicopters to Iraq, and U.S. guns to Libya all threaten that dynamic. And that doesn’t even include nuclear armaments.

NIGERIA: We received reports this morning that Boko Haram militants have resumed attacks in Borno state. The Nigerian Air Force says it has destroyed Boko Haram hideouts in the area following an air raid today, but local officials say Boko Haram has killed over 250 in the last two weeks in Borno, a state in northern Nigeria.

CANADA: Pressure on the Obama administration to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline project is building in the Midwest and Canada, particularly after the State Department issued a report last week saying the pipeline would not significantly worsen carbon pollution.