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WASHINGTON, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Two senior U.S. Senate Democrats invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to a closed-door meeting with Democratic senators during his upcoming visit to Washington, amid tensions over his plans to address the U.S. Congress on Iran's nuclear program.
Senators Richard Durbin and Dianne Feinstein extended the invitation "to maintain Israel's dialog with both political parties in Congress," according to a letter to the Israeli leader obtained by Reuters.
Netanyahu has faced criticism at home and in the United States for his plans to address Congress on March 3, just two weeks before Israeli elections. He was invited by Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress who consulted neither Democrats in Congress nor Democratic President Barack Obama's administration.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Eric Walsh)

If the Greeks leave the Eurozone, it would be awful. Both Greece and the remainder of the euro area would experience damaging volatility and uncertainty. But "Grexit" does not have to be all bad. In fact, if the Eurozone countries use the crisis to push through long-needed reforms, they could wind up in a much stronger position in the long run.

The Eurozone faces two related challenges. The first, fundamental challenge is that the single currency arrangement lacks the tools to maintain economic synchrony across diverse economies. The political cost of sacrificing fiscal independence has always stymied efforts to build features like burden-sharing arrangements between countries.

The Global Financial Crisis revealed the consequence of this shortcoming. It ripped through the periphery economies, but left core countries in much better shape. With only one Eurozone-wide interest rate to respond, the ECB was unable to avoid the eruption of what we now know as the Eurocrisis.

A second challenge has now come to the fore, as Greece plays high-stakes poker with the European Commission. Agreement to exceptional treatment for Greece risks establishing a precedent that Eurozone rules can be broken. Failure to reach an agreement could mean Grexit.

The first structural challenge clearly set up the second Greek bailout challenge. But now capitulation to Greek demands would feed back to exacerbate the structural challenge. Not only would Eurozone institutions be inadequate, but they would have weak authority. This is not a tenable outcome for the Eurozone.

Grexit would be better. Clearly it would create a chaotic situation in Greece that would make things worse before they got better. However, reasonable economists can debate whether staying in the Eurozone with a too-strong exchange rate and high debt would be better for Greece. In any case, the ball is in Greece's court to make this decision, so presumably they will choose the option that they feel works best for Greece. God speed.

For the Eurozone, the biggest risk from Grexit is that membership appears optional. Despite all laws and institutions designed for permanence, any member - even Germany - could be viewed as having one eye on their own exit should some economic disjuncture become unbearable. Moreover, domestic euroskeptic parties would surely try to capitalize on the momentum provided by Grexit. The Eurozone would face a true risk of break up.

Yet, much as they may like to entertain the idea of greater national autonomy, the average European does not at all want to see a total break up of the Eurozone. This is a key fact. Faced with the bald reality of that scenario, it is reasonable to imagine that panic will set in and support will shift massively to the side of Eurozone solidarity.

The Eurozone has been in need of just such an existential crisis to provide the proverbial kick in the pants to its members to commit to greater fiscal burden sharing. If European leaders play their cards right, they can leverage this shift in sentiment to overcome previous political hurdles to greater fiscal integration.

Stronger fiscal arrangements would make the Eurozone much more durable. In that sense, it could serve as an effective adhesive applied to the perceived cracks Grexit would create. It may remain true that exit is an option for remaining members, but stronger fiscal arrangements reduce the economic disjuncture that makes exit attractive. The door may be open, but everyone takes a big step back away from it.

The question then becomes what form the fiscal burden sharing arrangement takes. The new fiscal compact, currently being tested by France's request for forbearance, is insufficient. While Greece's problems (absent the accounting fraud) might have been limited by a fiscal compact, neither Ireland nor Spain would have been saved.

A minimum requirement is greater financial safety nets. Eurozone members balked at creating area-wide deposit insurance two years ago. Instead, ECB-led supervision with a bailout fund is a step forward, but not quite there yet. The European Commission envisions a process of deepening of fiscal integration culminating in an autonomous Eurozone budget with automatic cross-border fiscal stabilizers.

The best outcome would be for Greece and the European Commission to find a bargain that preserves the integrity of Eurozone discipline and meets Greek demands for less austerity. The scenario in which Grexit results in a stronger fiscal union among remaining members is very risky. It assumes leaders are able to perform political judo in managing the popular reaction to Grexit.

But given the choices the European Commission faces, this strategy may not look so bad. If played right, Greece leaving the Eurozone could ironically result in a more robust, more viable currency union than they have today.

WASHINGTON -- Turkey made its boldest move yet against the Islamic State over the weekend.

It wasn't to help the U.S.-led air campaign against the group, something Turkey could do by making its strategic Incirlik Air Base available to American jets. It wasn't, as has been the case for Egypt and Jordan, to avenge an attack by the extremist group on its nationals. And it wasn't to aid the Syrian Kurds of Kobani, who faced an Islamic State assault for months as Turkish tanks stood idle on nearby hilltops.

It was, instead, because of history.

Turkey sent tanks and hundreds of troops into Syria late Saturday to save a celebrated shrine threatened by Islamic State militants.

The shrine is the tomb of Suleyman Shah, whose grandson founded the Ottoman Empire. That empire, the immediate predecessor of the modern Turkish republic, decayed for centuries and eventually collapsed after World War I. But many Turks -- among them Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- see the Ottoman period as their nation's grandest moment. Though the tomb is in Syria, where Shah is thought to have died in the 13th century, Turkey retained control of it through a 1921 agreement with Syria's former colonial ruler, France.

That arrangement, like others in the region, appears to have worked fairly well until the Islamic State entered the picture. Militants linked to the extremist group and other rebels who seek to take portions of Syria from the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad have been operating near and indirectly threatening the Suleyman Shah shrine for months. In March 2014, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's then-foreign minister and current prime minister, said his country would counter any assault on the mausoleum.

"Should there be an attack, either from the regime, or radical groups or elsewhere, it would be countered equally," Davutoglu said, according to The New York Times. The comments made clear that the Turkish government, a vocal opponent of Assad, would enter his country to defend the shrine.

The incursion over the weekend was the first overt Turkish participation in the four-year Syrian civil war. Reports say up to 40 Turkish soldiers were rescued from the shrine, along with the historical remains and relics stored there. One Turkish soldier was killed in an "accident" during the operation, the Turkish military said. Whether the Turks had to actually fight off Islamic State militants remained unclear.

The government was reportedly nervous that the Islamic State would take the soldiers stationed at the tomb hostage, the way it kidnapped 46 Turks and three Iraqis working with them when it took over the Iraqi city of Mosul over the summer. (The 49 hostages were eventually released under circumstances that remain murky.)

The fighting around the shrine had become more intense in recent days as Syrian Kurdish fighters, fresh from a victory in Kobani, were advancing against fighters with the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Two Turkish newspapers, multiple Kurdish sources and a Turkish security source interviewed by Reuters said that the Turkish troops that went to the tomb, 20 miles from the border with Syria, passed through Kobani. That would represent an easing of tensions between the Turks and the Syrian Kurds, whose relationship has historically been poor because of the Syrian Kurds' connection to a Kurdish movement that has battled the Turkish state. That relationship worsened when the Turks failed to substantively support Kobani -- and, it appeared, permitted ISIS to exploit territory they had abandoned. An improved relationship would be very good news for the U.S.-led fight against ISIS.

The Assad regime, which has made its own efforts to look like a partner to the U.S. against the extremist group, blasted the Turkish move. Turkey is helping the U.S. to train and equip anti-Assad moderate Syrian rebels battle ISIS.

The ancient relics -- which include three important sarcophagi -- are, for now, being kept at another burial site in Syria, one much closer to the Turkish border (and to the Syrian Kurds.) Though Turkey has destroyed the old mausoleum, Davutoglu said it would like to return the artifacts to that site eventually.

See below what the monument looked like before the raid to rescue it from ISIS -- and what has happened to its celebrated relics since.



FILE - In this April 7, 2011, file photo, Turkey's Minister of Foresty and Waters Veysel Eroglu, fourth from right, and unidentified Turkish officials are seen during a ceremony at the entrance of the memorial site of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, in Karakozak village, northeast of Aleppo, Syria. (AP Photo/ Ministry of Foresty and Waters.)



FILE - In this April 7, 2011, file photo, Turkish soldiers stand guard at the entrance of the memorial site of Suleyman Shah. (AP Photo/File)



In this April 7, 2011, file photo, Turkish soldiers stand guard during a ceremony at the entrance of the memorial site of Suleyman Shah. (AP Photo/ Ministry of Forestry and Waters, File)



New position of the Suleyman Shah mausoleum is pictured from Turkish side of the border as Turkish army vehicles move inside Syria on Feb. 22, 2015, at Birecik in Sanliurfa, during an operation to relieve the garrison guarding the Suleyman Shah mausoleum in northern Syria. The operation was jointly conducted by the intelligence organization and the Turkish army, a few days after reports suggested that the tomb was besieged by jihadists belonging to the Islamic State. (ILYAS AKENGIN/AFP/Getty Images)



Military ceremony for Halit Avci, the soldier who died as a result of an "accident" during the Suleyman Shah tomb operation in Syria, on Feb. 22, 2015. (Veli Gurgah/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)



Soldiers stand during a ceremony held for coffins brought from the tomb of Suleyman Shah to a provisional tomb in Syria on Feb. 22, 2015. (Okan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)



Soldiers stand during a ceremony held for coffins brought from the tomb of Suleyman Shah in Karakozak village, northeast of Aleppo, Syria. (Okan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)



Soldiers and an imam pray beside coffins brought from the tomb of Suleyman Shah in Syria to a provisional tomb on Feb. 22, 2015. (Okan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

A disconcerting report released last week revealed that New York City could see a 6-foot rise in sea levels by the end of this century. It would make nearly half a million New Yorkers vulnerable to flooding, and waterfront properties would be virtually uninhabitable.

But what if climate change continues unabated for even longer? What will New York City look like if, say, both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melt completely, raising sea levels an estimated 260 feet?

Urban planner and cartographer Jeffrey Linn used computerized mapping to make a GIF demonstrating just that. Watch the city's five boroughs disappear, with only the lofty heights of New Jersey's Pallisades left as an island:




Linn, who posted the GIF on his blog Spatialities, told The Huffington Post he wanted to show people what the city would look like after "the terminal point for ice caps melting," which some scientists estimate could happen in 1,000 to 10,000 years.

"What would the world around me look like, where I live, if in thousands of years, this is supposed to happen?" Linn said he wondered.

Linn also made this mesmerizing map of New York City after only 100 feet of sea level rise. The city's neighborhoods and parks are cleverly rechristened with more nautical nomenclatures: Central Park is Central Shark, Bushwick is Flushwick, the West Village is Wet Village, and so on:



He's made similarly alarming maps for his hometown of Seattle, as well as London and Montreal, among other cities.

The polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, as manmade greenhouse gas emissions continue to trap the sun's heat. Here, for example, is a 2012 video showing a lower Manhattan-sized piece of ice breaking off from the Greenland ice sheet:

Washington politics always involves a high level of silliness (does President Obama really love America?), but when it comes to trade policy it shifts to full-fledged craziness. Anything is fair game when the political establishment wants to pass major trade agreements like NAFTA or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). At such times we see respectable Washington types making pronouncements bearing so little relationship to reality that they would cause Sarah Palin to cringe.

The Washington Post gave us one such gem last week when it took issue with those saying that currency rules should be part of any new trade pact. Its lead editorial last Thursday argued against including any provisions on currency. Its main point is best summarized by a paraphrase of an old Barbie line: "Currency values are hard."

The Post argued that it would be impossible to distinguish between policies intended for other purposes, like the Fed's quantitative easing (QE) program, which was designed to boost growth, and policies whose main purpose is to depress the value of the currency. An assertion like this in the context of a debate on trade is laughable.

Every provision in trade agreements will have ambiguities, most of which are much more difficult to resolve than this one. Trade deals all prohibit export subsidies, almost by definition. But what about publicly funded vocational training in which the government picks up much of an exporter's training costs? What about publicly financed infrastructure that reduces the exporter's cost to send its products out of the country?

What about publicly financed research (e.g., the National Institutes of Health) that hugely reduce the cost to private firms of innovation? What about below-market interest loans provided by the Export-Import Bank? If the Post is really concerned about potential ambiguities raising difficult enforcement issues, then it should be staunchly opposed to restrictions on export subsidies, since many of these issues actually are hard.

As a practical matter, it really is not difficult to recognize governmental actions intended to affect currency values. Fred Bergsten, the former president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and an ardent supporter of free trade, came up with a list of conditions a few years back.

At the center of this list was the accumulation of a massive amount of foreign exchange reserves and large and persistent trade surpluses. It also helps that most of the countries accused of currency "manipulation" explicitly target the value of their currency. If the Post's editorial board and others can't tell the difference between these actions and QE, then maybe they are in the wrong line of work.

As crazy as this story is, the rest of the argument is even better. The Post tells us that adding currency rules "at this late date could cause a rebellion by TPP negotiating partners, possibly scuttling the entire project, along with all the benefits, geopolitical and economic, of knitting major Pacific Rim economies together under the aegis of U.S.-style free trade."

Actually, many of us had been complaining about currency values for a long time. The reason that the issue is being pressed "at this late date" is that there was no opportunity for action earlier. With fast-track trade authority finally being taken up by Congress, this is the first chance for the public to weigh in on the trade deal. So the Post's argument here is essentially that we kept the deal out of public sight for so long (it is still secret) that it is now too late for the public to weigh in.

The issue about a rebellion by our trading partners is also entertaining. There are many issues in the TPP that our trading partners don't like. They don't like rules that will force them to pay more for drugs from Pfizer and Merck, nor do they like rules that will make them pay more money to Time Warner for Hollywood movies, or to Microsoft for software. But President Obama and the Post were willing to risk a rebellion from our trading partners to get higher profits for the pharmaceutical, entertainment, and software industries. It is only when the question is one of jobs for U.S. workers that the risk of such a rebellion becomes an unacceptable price.

Finally, the bad story that we are supposed to fear, "scuttling the entire project," should arouse howls of derision everywhere. Wow, all those industry folks spent years trying to craft a deal that would boost their profits by circumventing laws and regulations in the U.S. and elsewhere, and now their efforts may prove pointless? Pass the handkerchief! I can't hold back the tears.

On the serious side, we could have trade deals that would advance the interests of workers in the United States. For example, if we focused on reducing patent and copyright protections nationally and internationally, we could save hundreds of billions annually on drugs and other products. We could also loosen professional barriers that cause our doctors to earn twice as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries, leading to huge savings in healthcare costs.

But these items are not on President Obama's trade agenda. Rather, it is dominated by a list of measures that are likely to increase inequality. And if his trade deals are defeated because they refuse to take any steps to redress the trade deficit and the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs to trade, it will not be bad news for the country.

In a February 1941 editorial in Life magazine, Time and Life publisher Henry Luce called on his readers to "create the first great American Century." The term radiates hubris, but it has proved long-lived. In today's hyperpartisan America, embracing or rejecting the concept has become a measure of patriotism.

At the idea's heart, however, is the basic truth of American exceptionalism. For much of the 20th century, the United States was a stabilizing force, with its military and economic power dominating world affairs. There have been plenty of ups and downs: anchoring the fight against Nazi Germany on the one hand, and becoming embroiled in a debilitating Southeast Asian war on the other, not to mention championing a global human-rights agenda while failing to ensure basic freedoms for minority Americans.

Harvard professor Joseph Nye, well known for his explorations of soft power, considers the American prospect in his newly published book, Is the American Century Over? (Polity, $12.95) His answer is a carefully constructed "No," which is based partly on the fact that there is no logical successor to convincingly claim dominance over the next century. Even the United States finds itself sharing the world stage with a growing cast of states and non-state actors, all with influence enhanced by new information and communication technologies.

China is most often cited as the leading superpower for the coming century, but Nye skillfully points out that there might be less to China than meets the eye. He notes that 46 percent of the top 500 transnational corporations are owned by Americans, and that 19 of the top 25 global brands are American. Further, writes Nye, "China remains weak in science and technological innovation." He adds that Chinese complain that they "produce iPhone jobs, but not Steve Jobs."

China has emphasized soft power as a way to become a more significant player in world affairs and has spent vast sums on international broadcasting, Confucius Institutes, and other means of reaching the rest of the world. But the soft-power tools that China wields are mostly manufactured by government, while American soft power is rooted in civil society: universities, popular culture, private foundations, and such. China, continues Nye, "makes the mistake of thinking that government is the main instrument of soft power. In today's world, information is not scarce but attention is, and attention depends on credibility. Government propaganda is rarely credible."

Setting China aside, the continued prominence of the United States is partly attributable to an innate appeal that is best appreciated by those living outside the country. Nye notes that "the upward mobility of immigrants is attractive to people in other countries." As evidence, Nye cites the fact that 25 percent of high-tech startups have an immigrant founder, and 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children.

In a society in which power is often a function of information dissemination, soft power is ever more important. Nye writes, "Conventional wisdom has always held that the government with the largest military prevails, but in an information age it may be the state (or non-state) with the best story that wins."

Soft power is closely tied to multinational cooperation, and in an era of a "multipartner world" (Hillary Rodham Clinton's term), skillful collaboration is essential. Nye writes, "If the American century is to continue, it will not be enough to think in terms of American power over others. One must also think in terms of power to accomplish joint goals, which involves power with others" (Nye's emphases).

Nye concludes that "we have not entered a post-American world," and that "the American century is not over." In this short, thoughtful book, he presents his case convincingly. It is a case that policy makers should ponder carefully.

The other morning I opened The New York Times to the headline "Thailand's Junta Tries to Bury the Opposition in Endless Lawsuits." The story was referencing the civil takeover of that government by the military through institutions often hailed as bastions of democracy and stability -- the court system and regulatory agencies, specifically.

It's an example of a seemingly democratic government using any tactics available to stifle opposition, even those that are theoretically set up to preserve the diversity of political voices. The recent imprisonment of Chen Shui Bian, former President of Taiwan, is another one of those stories that fits into this narrative.

After leaving office, Mr. Chen was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the new president. While the charges brought were embezzlement and money laundering, Chen's real crime was the reforms that he had tried to implement and the corruption he had blocked while in office -- reforms that the new government directly opposed. Numbers tell the true nature of the manufactured crimes against him. Under Chen's eight years of presidency, many major infrastructure projects, such as Taipei 101, a new high-speed train system, a second north-south highway, a tunnel through central mountains (defying extreme engineering challenges), and reform of the banking systems, were all completed ahead of schedule and well under budget, saving the country several hundred billions of Taiwanese dollars.

After exhaustive investigation, the government could only find a rather obscure and irrelevant land deal to pin on Chen. On the other hand, under the Ma administration, the country is now heavily in debt, approaching or exceeding the Greece's level, while no major infrastructure projects could be named. The new Taipei mayor, Dr. Ko, has become a national hero for unsealing classified documents to reveal the real nature of corruption under his two predecessors, including the current president Ma.

The world owes Chen a rigorous legal review to see if he received a fair trial. Or is his case clear-cut political persecution? There are some more facts to ponder here. Within one hour after Chen left his office as President of Taiwan on May 20, 2008, an order was issued by the new administration to limit Mr. Chen's travel while an investigation into allegations that he had misused his presidential discretionary fund was carried out. Six months later, on Nov. 12, 2008, he was placed in custody before any charges were filed. Over the next two years of custody, he was denied bail nine times while uncountable new charges continued to be filed against him. He had no client-attorney privilege; all his conversations with his attorneys were monitored and recorded by the prison authority.

For Chen, in those two years, there were many verdicts reversed and new trials ordered, and he was also found innocent in some. Initially Chen was sentenced to life in prison in his discretionary fund case by the same judge who had acquitted Ma Ying-Jeou, the current president, for misuse of his Taipei Major discretionary fund. Ma deposited half of his discretionary fund to his wife's account over several years, but the judge cited the fund management in ancient China (Song Dynasty) to justify his ruling in acquitting Ma. Eventually Chen was found innocent in the retrial of the discretionary fund case by the lower court, but the Highest Court invalided the innocent verdict and ordered another new trial. On Nov. 11, 2010, Taiwan's Highest Court issued a direct ruling to sentence Mr. Chen to 11 years in prison for the land deal case mentioned above. Note that Taiwan's Highest Court had never before issued a direct verdict; usually it returns the case to the lower courts for a retrial or agrees with the lower court's ruling. The day before this direct verdict Ma had dinner with many top officials of the judicial and justice departments to convey his personal view on Chen's guilt. Was this a coincidence? Even worse, the guilty verdict is based on a newly invented legal theory that speculates that because Chen was the president, he must have had some influence over the land deal, even though there is no direct evidence to link him at all. See a detailed account of all courts cases against Chen here.

You could say that there is somewhat of a tradition of leaders going from prison to the presidency; from Nelson Mandela to Lech Walesa of Poland, the world has seen men go from solitary confinement to inaugural parades as the political landscape beneath them suddenly changes. There is less of a tradition of going from ruling the country one day to competing for sleeping space in an overcrowded prison cell the next.

Chen Shui Bian, who had been in charge of a country for nearly eight years, found himself suddenly in prison under bright lights 24 hours a day as he struggled to get used to the prison food and the cold, concrete ground that was his bed. He'd been a successful lawyer before taking his place at the helm of the country and had done everything in his power to push for Taiwanese independence, which was at the centerpiece of his administration.

After six years in prison, the lack of access to medical care began to take its toll. As Chen Shui Bian grew weaker and weaker, the Taiwanese government grew increasingly concerned about the political fallout that would result from him dying in prison. They released him on house arrest for a 30-day recuperation period, which has now been extended for another 90 days.

Chen Shui Bian walked out of prison on the day of his temporary release with his head held high, shaking hands concealed in his coat pockets. He now endures house arrest as he struggles to recover, and his fate remains unclear.

The circumstances of his charges and trial are murky, wrapped up in the politics that have consumed Taiwan since after World War II: Taiwan's relationship with China. I agree with Chen Shui Bian that Taiwan should have its shot at true independence from the snaking economic and political arms of China. His view more closely aligns with that of the young people in Taiwan today and offers Taiwan a clearer shot at economic and political prosperity.

You may not agree with me or with Chen Shui Bian. You may have an equally powerful and entirely different point of view. The point here is not to debate the validity of Taiwan's independence or lack thereof but to assert that Chen Shui Bian should not suffer any longer for his own political platform and beliefs, to argue that government institutions set up to protect diversity should not be used to stifle opposing voices, and to suggest that Chen Shui Bian, whatever his political positions, should not have to sacrifice his life because of a shift in the political winds sweeping across Taiwan.