Like many boys in Antwerp, Brian De Mulder dreamed of being a professional footballer. His favorite team was continental …
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Iran’s Supreme Leader Tightens Grip After Disqualifying Two Top Presidential Candidates
For the cleric who runs Iran, there’s no such thing as a pleasant surprise, especially on election day. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not pleased when a librarian named Mohammad Khatami was swept into the president’s office in …
India Scorched by Blistering Heatwave
A blistering heatwave has hit stretches of India, with temperatures reaching 45 degrees celsius, or 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Ahead of the seasonal monsoon rains, millions are now looking for ways to cool off.
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Iranian authorities ban two influential politicians from running in the presidential election next month, bear bile farming draws strong criticism in China and Britain has reportedly asked the E.U. to add the military wing of …
Savage Escalation Threatened in Thailand’s Southern Insurgency
“Children and women will not be spared,” warned the leaflet. It wasn’t an idle threat. On May 1, Islamist insurgents from the Pejuang Kemerdekaan Fatoni — the Fatoni or Pattani Fighters — opened fire on villagers …
Iraq’s Sectarian Violence: Bombings Plunge Country Into Deadly Spiral
In early January 2006, less than a month after I arrived in Iraq as a young U.S. Army lieutenant, I witnessed my first act of violence committed against Iraqi civilians. While on a patrol on a highway 20 km south of Baghdad, a …
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Guatemala’s highest court overturns the genocide conviction of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, the European Parliament will hold talks to fight tax evasion and a three-month dip in hog prices in China is poised to come to an end
Forget Paris: Stymied by Socialist Policies, the French Start to Quit France
Ernest Hemingway once described Paris in spring as a time when “there were no problems except where to be happiest.” Clearly Hemingway did not foresee the springtime of 2013. For many of Paris’ residents right now — in …
15 Years After the Fall of Suharto, a Mixed Picture of Indonesia’s Minorities
Indonesians are rightly proud of their country’s democratic transformation. But the relative openness that Indonesians have enjoyed since 1998 has given rise not only to civic freedom but also hard-line religious groups that …
A Tale of Two Factory Disasters: What Cambodia Can Teach Bangladesh
As the final death toll of the Bangladesh factory collapse reached 1,126 last week, a small section of the second floor of a shoe factory in Cambodia gave way. Two people died, but witnesses said it was a stroke of luck that the …
Chinese Premier Li’s New Delhi Visit Puts Sino-Indian Ties in the Spotlight
New Delhi commuters are not among those likely to be won over by China’s new Premier during his three-day visit to the Indian capital this week. On Monday morning, rush-hour traffic ground to a sweltering halt on one of the …
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The E.U. is worried about Russia’s human rights record, rubber barons deforest Cambodia and Laos and attempts to introduce a law to protect women’s freedoms have reportedly been blocked by conservative religious lawmakers in Afghanistan
How Syria’s Rebels Aren’t Winning the War: The Anatomy of a Battle
The short message screeched over a walkie-talkie, prompting the half a dozen rebels in the room who had been lounging on flat mattresses and drinking tea to jump to their feet, grab their guns and run out of the door. It was …
Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina’s Disappearer in Chief, Dies at 87
He would never have been cast to play the role of a bloody South American dictator in a Hollywood film. Soft-spoken, deeply religious, rake thin and awkward, his lean face cut horizontally by an incongruously thick walrus …
