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But despite these milestones, NATO has struggled to adapt to the post-Cold War era. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, committing each member state to consider an attack against a state as an attack against all, was raised for the first time after 11 September. That led to Afghanistan, a massive operation that has put enormous pressure on the alliance and fueled tensions about whether the future focus should be on foreign missions or closer to home. Earlier this year, an ad hoc group of experts that ugg boots NATO is more versatile and efficient to deal with current challenges such as terrorism, computer crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The panel, led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also said to be better at communicating its achievements, or risk losing public support. But just as new security threats, NATO has had to cope with shyness new European nations when it comes to putting troops on the line, as the war in Afghanistan has shown. Daniel Keohane, senior research fellow at the Institute for Security Studies of the EU in Brussels, said that public support for Europe is falling in part due to the evacuation of Afghanistan campaign and the unpopular Iraq war. "Many Europeans no longer want to follow U.S. ugg boots on military operations if its basic security interests are not clear or if they believe they have little to say about the strategy, "He says. This is reflected in the decline in defense spending. Even with its commitments in Afghanistan, the total defense among the European NATO members declined from 311 billion U.S. dollars in 2001 to $ 272 million in 2009. (See pictures of dangerous Korengal Valley of Afghanistan.) In March, Rasmussen, former Danish Prime Minister, warned that Europeans could not take the transatlantic alliance with U.S. for granted. He said the EU, which moved to establish a stronger defense and security policy under the Lisbon treaty last year, "will remain a paper tiger if not followed by concrete deliverables when we need military contributions.” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned regularly of the "demilitarization" of Europe. "My concern is that the more our allies to reduce their capabilities, more people will watch the United States to fill the spaces that are created," Gates said in Brussels last month. At the same time as the U.S. Iran sees Middle East and the rise of China, "which is no longer full-time European power," says Mark Leonard, co-author of "The specter of a multipolar Europe," a report published last month by European Council on Foreign Relations. "Washington sees Europe as essentially 'fixed', and thinks it is time for Europeans to step in providing their own security." Despite these existential issues, ugg outlet NATO has never been busier. There are about 120,000 international troops joined the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Only NATO troops left Bosnia in 2004 and still come together for peacekeeping duty in Kosovo. And last year, warships from NATO patrol to combat piracy off Somalia. (See pictures of the Somali pirates.) But all I cannot even is enough. The question for Obama and other leaders gathered in Lisbon if what they say in their crisp new mission statement or if these NATO operations are the last spasm of an ambivalent alliance. RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia resigned Wednesday as head of the country's National Guard and transferred the position of influence for his son in an apparent sign that the old king is starting to reduce some of its functions. Saudi Press Agency reported that Prince Abdullah Abdullah bin Mitab appointed as commander of the Guard. King Abdullah had led the ugg outlet force since 1962. The king is credited with building the unit once largely ceremonial in a modern 260,000-strong force that is a counterbalance to the military. La Guardia, which was the original power base Abdullah, protects the royal family. Their desserts are well-equipped soldiers and are considered more effective than the regular army, which recruits largely from urban areas. Earlier this week, the king of 86 years of age also gave their traditional supervisory duties for the annual hajj pilgrimage to his deputy minister, because doctors advised him to rest after a ruptured disc in his back. Abdullah appeared on Saudi television Tuesday to receive good wishes for the Eid al-Adha. Epidemics highlight the irrational fears anywhere - but especially in Haiti, where people are particularly vulnerable after the earthquake that struck the country in January. In the past few weeks, an outbreak of cholera has produced ugg outlet nearly 17,000 cases confirmed in Haiti and left over 1,000 dead. Therefore, it was expected that eventually lash Haitians who is suspected of the introduction and spread of the disease in Haiti, despite its relative lack of drinking water had not seen in half century cholera. This week the Haitian protesters target groups that are more accountable: the United Nations security and stabilization mission known by its French acronym MINUSTAH, whose 12,000 peacekeepers have been a ubiquitous presence in the country since 2004 . Monday, noviembre15, protesters took to the streets in the northern port of Cap Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti, burning tires, closing the airport and the exchange of gunfire with soldiers on a UN base MINUSTAH in nearby Quartier Morin. Six peacekeepers were injured, and one of the armed Haitian demonstrators was shot dead. (MINUSTAH officials insist that peacekeeping forces fired on protesters in self-defense.) On Monday night, protesters continued to threaten with the base in the fire. In the northern city of Pont-Neuf, protesters set fire to a police station. "It's chaos here," said a businessman from Cap Haitien to Reuters. (See how to build a hospital in Haiti may be illegal.) Because health officials, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that the bacteria of cholera now raging through Haiti match the strains are commonly found in South Asia, Haiti's anger is focused mainly on peacekeeping ugg boots forces MINUSTAH Nepal. Although the source of the outbreak has not yet been determined - most of the clues point to the recent floods in the central Artibonite River - Rumors have spread for weeks that discharges in a camp latrine peacekeeping forces in Nepal are guilty, even though the UN says the soldiers have tested negative for cholera, which is most often transmitted through infected feces in the water. On Monday, protesters threw stones at peacekeepers from Nepal in the northern city of Hinche, shouting slogans against the UN and demand that Nepal's license. (See the pictures of cholera outbreak in Haiti.) With presidential elections of 28 November, the UN estimates that more than just health concerns involved. MINUSTAH spokesman ugg outlet Vincent Pugliese said that the protests were not spontaneous, and it all started around 6 am on Monday, suggesting to him a level of coordination for political reasons by the Haitians who oppose the election. "This was a clear message to boycott the election," says Pugliese. "We ensure safety, [so] if it weakens the MINUSTAH, the choice is not going to happen." Whether true or not, the protesters, including groups such as Haiti UN anti-Bri Kouri magazine Nouvel Gaye (the sound of news in all directions) say they are planning a massive march in the National Palace in Port Prince on Thursday, November 18 to demand the withdrawal of the MINUSTAH forces. Cholera, which is easily treatable but can cause fatal ugg outlet dehydration due to vomiting and diarrhea if not remedied quickly, rarely transmitted from person to person. But that fear is palpable in the crowded streets of Port-au-Prince, where people are now hesitant to shake hands and instead of elbows blow to wave to another. In the squalid tent city on the Champs de Mars, outside the presidential palace collapsed on Saturday, police found a man dead, probably from cholera in a portable toilet. And in the slums of Cité Soleil vulnerable capital, the number of cases began to grow exponentially last week, doctors and NGOs such as Médecins San Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders aka) are struggling to find beds. (See TIME photo essay "History of Haiti from misery.") On Monday, MSF clinic campaign ugg outlet improvised in the Sarthe, near the airport, to absorb the overflow of Choscal Cité Soleil's Hospital - where he saw TIME patients being transported as walking wounded - but its capacity was only 60. "The cases we are getting seem to be doubling every day," says Virginia Cauderlier, a Belgian MSF nurse who worked in the midst of major epidemic of cholera in Zimbabwe last year. "This could become a major disaster like that." As Cauderlier tended to an infected child in Haiti who had fallen from his crib and was falling asleep on the floor in his own diarrhea, and as a gaunt man vomited near the water who had tried only for drinking, Cité Soleil Pierre mother Mirade , 23, looked at her 18 month old Bouchon nap with her, too weak to sit. Both are infected, said IV tubes from her and your child's wrists, and three residents have died of cholera. "It really hit us so hard," says Lo, whose husband died in the earthquake. "To go through something like this now, we will not have the strength to live tomorrow." However, although the ugg boots practice may have been a blessing for patients and Mirade and Bouchon, is an intrusion of the threat of local and Saidette Sarthe René, 39, mother of four who last week led a noisy protest march on the street. Two cases of cholera have been confirmed in Sarthe, and Rene and their neighbors are sure that because of the clinic. "We do not want these people here!" Says Rene, a surgical mask over his hat. "No one consulted us!" The people around strongly agree. This crowd, however, was likely to grow angrier when he learned that the Haitian health authorities are building another clinic in Sarthe to the house of 260 patients. Despite the protests, said a spokesman for MSF, Haiti has no choice but to seek areas away from neighborhoods people to accommodate the number of victims of the explosion of anger. "It keeps expanding and expanding - at some point we will not be able to [follow]," he says. "There's a real sense of urgency." The woman who could be the next president of ugg boots Haiti - and the first woman elected to that office - not you think an insurgent when she enters a room. But Mirlande Manigat, elegantly dressed, soft-spoken 70-year-old Sorbonne Ph.D., insists that after nothing less than a "rupture" with the dysfunctional political system in Haiti. "No one who is violent or brutal, but there must be changes," said Manigat in an interview with TIME in his campaign headquarters in Port-au-Prince. "We cannot allow so many millions of Haitians left anymore." So far, his message is resonating within the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, which was razed in January by an earthquake that killed some 230,000 people - and now for a cholera outbreak that has claimed nearly 1,000. Two weeks before five finger shoes Haiti's November 28 presidential elections, polls show voters Manigat the clear favorite in a field of 19 candidates. In the most recent independent Haiti Economic Forum, launched last week, Manigat significantly expanded its lead over the candidate nominated by President René Préval, Jude Celestin engineer, by a margin of 30% to 22%. That the government's decision is ultimately not a surprise: the response is often absent without permission from the earthquake apocalyptic Preval has alienated the majority of Haitians of INIT (Unity) Party. His frustration with Haiti's corrupt political elite incompetent, many feel INIT represents is one of the reasons the country was rejoicing candidacy outside the hip-hop star born American Wyclef Jean and philanthropist. When Jean Haiti's electoral council disqualified bid in August for residence, the question was where his support, especially among the large cohort of young voters, it would displace. (Why Wyclef Jean wants to run for President of Haiti?) To the surprise of many experts, many of them seem to have gone from gold chains to threads rapper Jean Pearl Manigat matriarch. (She is also eclipsing Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, himself a pop star in Haiti, which ranks third in the survey of the Forum with only 11 %.) If so, one reason could be that "Many Haitians feel the time Abercrombie and Fitch has come for women to lead the country," said prominent historian and political analyst Haitian Georges Michel. "So here is Manigat, a highly respected academic, taking many of the populist positions that [Jean] and had to respond to his grandmother image. For many of them that seems to inspire confidence and trust. "These qualities will be strong demand for the next president of Haiti will oversee about $ 10 billion in reconstruction aid promised by international donors. (See Haiti candidate other rock star.) But even if she is a woman, Abercrombie and Fitch sale Manigat is by no means a political outsider. She is, in fact, a former First Lady, wife of former President Leslie Manigat. They met in the 1960 at the University of Paris, where he taught history in exile - sentenced to death at home brutal Haitian dictator Fran?ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who died in 1971 - and she was his student. They married in 1970, living in France, Trinidad and Venezuela before returning to Haiti in 1986 after the overthrow of Duvalier's son and successor, the dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.