China Abuzz – State news agency Xinhua reports on the end of Vice President Xi Jinping’s foreign tour to the U.S., Ireland and Turkey. Meanwhile, attention at home has turned to comments by a Japanese mayor purportedly denying …
Ireland
More Taxes, Please: We’re French
Europe may be agonizing amid the worst financial crisis since the Second World War, but that still isn’t forcing France to accept the logic of economic liberalism that dominates much of world. That largely “Anglo-Saxon” …
Crunch Time for the Euro and Europe: Taking Note of the Elephant
Elephant, meet room.
Doubt and despair returned to Europe by Tuesday despite positive reaction a day earlier to the French-German proposals to save the teetering euro. The reason? The pachyderm in the room that markets see all …
Is Sarkozy and Merkel’s New Debt Proposal The Beginning of The End To The Euro Crisis?
The details of the campaign by France and Germany to save the euro became a little clearer Monday though substantial questions about it remain as the week winds toward a European Union summit on the euro crisis summit on Friday. …
Outsider Odds: Ireland’s Herman Cain No Longer a Cert for the Presidency
Until three days before the Oct. 27 ballot for the Irish presidency, Sean Gallagher’s 20-point lead looked unassailable. Then scandal blemished his campaign. It wasn’t your usual tawdry tale of a candidate who couldn’t keep it zipped—slacks or unwise opinions. Nor was it about venality in any direct sense. Gallagher doesn’t stand …
Will Bloody Sunday Payouts Set a Precedent of Compensation for Other Victims of the Troubles?
Britain’s Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the U.K. government will pay compensation to the families of those killed and wounded by British soldiers during the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre. The precedent set by the payouts could pave the way for families of those killed in other skirmishes and attacks during Ireland’s Troubles …
How European Leaders Are in the Same Boat as Obama When it Comes to Debt
A few of you, or at least your 401(k)s, may have noticed that financial markets plummeted again on Thursday. European markets closed at or near two-year lows across the board and the Dow closed down more than 400 points.
Asian markets Friday morning opened in the tank: the Nikkei index tumbling more than 2.5%, Sydney down 3.5%, …
The Merkel-Sarkozy Summit: A Minimalist Affair
It says a lot about the dramatic crisis facing the euro zone when the leaders of its two biggest economies go into a highly scrutinized summit amid promises, assurances, and even a form of hype stressing that nothing much will come from it. But that’s precisely the buzz surrounding this afternoon’s Paris meeting between German …
Obama in London: All Hope and Glory, Signifying Nothing?
President Barack Obama — in a speech before the British parliament that drew approving nods rather than the aerobic repeat ovations that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had elicited on Capitol Hill a day earlier — sought to reassure Britons that the transatlantic relationship remains “special”. More importantly, he wanted …
Obama: So Loved in Britain, He Might Consider Staying
The President was supposed to arrive for his two-day state visit to the U.K. on the morning of May 24. Instead, a plume of volcanic ash from Iceland forced a change of plan that saw POTUS curtail his trip to his ancestral homeland, Ireland, and head for London before Air Force One could be grounded. As officials scrambled to find him a …
McQueen Elizabeth, Barack O’Bama and the Luck of the Irish
The last time I was in Ireland, the country teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Its political leaders had already been written off as dead men walking (a little unfair to zombies, who are at least capable of inspiring fear if not respect), and its populace was mired in despair. Many Irish expressed the fear that their nation was heading …
Global Briefing: Crimes and Misdemeanors
L’affaire DSK: The arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual-assault charges in New York has plunged France into a bout of “soul searching” and probably removes the greatest threat to unpopular French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rule in upcoming elections. TIME’s global business correspondent Michael …
Exit Poll Signals Inglorious Exit for Ireland’s Fianna Fail
Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE has just published an exit poll that suggests the votes currently being counted will add up to more than just a change of government in the country. As every opinion poll, and our own correspondent, predicted, Fianna Fail has been ousted and Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny looks set to be the next Taoiseach, or …