China is minting millionaires at an unprecedented rate, but many of the country’s new rich are keen to leave the country where they made their fortunes. A recent survey by the Bank of China and the Hurun Report, a wealth-monitoring project run out of Shanghai, found that more than half of the 980 millionaires (or more, accurately, …
Migration
What’s Behind Violence at the World’s Largest Gold Mine?
Rights groups are calling on Indonesia to investigate the fatal shooting of gold and copper mine workers in eastern Indonesia. In a gruesome escalation of a dispute between U.S.-based Freeport-McMoRan and workers from their Grasberg mine, security forces opened fire on a crowd of strikers, killing one man and injuring more than a …
Rape as a Weapon of War: Men Suffer, Too
It’s talked about in whispers, if at all. But men and boys are all-too frequently subjected to sexual violence, particularly in times of conflict, forced confinement or war. The problem is persistent and global. For the most part, though, nobody wants to talk about it. Over the last few months, however, a handful of reports from West …
China’s Uighur Problem: One Man’s Ordeal Echoes the Plight of a People
Who is Ershidin Israil? An Islamic terrorist? A brave journalist? Or a Chinese spy? This much appears to be clear. In 2009 after riots convulsed Xinjiang, the tumultuous northwestern region of China that is home to the ethnic Uighur people, the 38-year-old teacher decamped to neighboring Kazakhstan. Ershidin’s friends and relatives …
Why Norway Terror Accused Breivik Says he Loves Israel
There was a time when a blond, blue-eyed nationalist looking to violently rid Europe of its “alien” immigrant population could be reliably assumed to hate Jews. It’s no longer quite that simple.
Anders Behring Breivik insists, in his rambling 1,500-page manifesto released on the day of his confessed rampage that killed 76 …
Why Greek Tumult Signals the Coming of Europe’s Own ‘Arab Spring’
Are the youth-led protests rocking Greece and other European countries a sign Arab Spring uprisings have jumped the Mediterranean? Kinda-sorta, say experts watching these movements. They warn that even if democratic systems in Europe can’t be compared with the brutally authoritarian regimes under fire in the Arab world, the angry …
Refugee Case Highlights Global Plight of Ahmadi Muslims
Almost 100 Pakistani refugees, including dozens of children and a month-old infant, were freed from a Thai immigration prison on Monday, after a rights group put up a $150,000 bond for their release. The men, women and children, all members of Ahmadiya, a minority Muslim sect, were detained in police raids between December and …
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 …
Schengen Revision: The Backstory To Tightening Europe’s Borders
Mystery solved–of sorts. As noted in a recent Global Spin post on moves to revise the Schengen treaty, alterations now being suggested by European Union officials are curious in two ways. First, they don’t really create any new powers for Schengen member states to re-establish border controls in the face of urgent situations; the …
French National Soccer Rocked By Accusations Of Racist Quotas
In the wake of its 1998 World Cup win, France’s victorious national soccer team was a source of French pride beyond its success in bagging the country’s first world crown. It was also celebrated for its black, blanc, beur make-up: the mix of black, white, and ethnic Arab stars who in the space of a month gelled as a peerless …
EU Revision Proposals For Schengen: A Demonstration Of False Hustle?
The European Commission—the European Union’s executive organ—is slated to present proposals Wednesday responding to the Franco-Italian demand for revision of the 1985 Schengen accords. An excellent story in today’s New York Times offers a forecast of what the EC’s suggestions are likely to include. It also provides a peek into …
What’s The One Thing Not Growing Fast In China? Its Population.
China, as we all know, is a rapidly expanding country. Economic growth is chugging along, the military is adding new high-tech hardware and international luxury brands are opening new stores on a near daily basis. But according to the results of the nation’s sixth census, China isn’t growing quite as dramatically in one key respect: …
Official Statistics Mock The Sarkozy-Berlusconi Offensive Against Schengen
As noted yesterday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi created headlines in responding to their bilateral Tunisian dilemma with their call Tuesday for revision and restriction of the entire Schengen treaty. Reworking that 26 year-old text, they made clear, will allow member nations to once again throw up …
