Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos will host the sixth Summit of the Americas this weekend, April 14 to 15, in the Caribbean city of Cartagena. The hemispheric gathering marks a comeback for Colombia, which is emerging from …
Must-Reads From Around the World: April 12, 2012
Pyongyang’s Plan – Despite mounting international pressure, a defiant North Korea appears poised to launch its Unha-3 rocket, viewed by the U.S. and others as a ballistic missile test that violates U.N. resolutions aimed at …
South Korea’s Election Paves the Way for a New Presidential Hopeful
Governing party leader Park Geun-hye got an unexpected nod of approval from South Korean voters on Wednesday, as her New Frontier Party took 152 of 300 seats in a surprise win in the nation’s parliamentary elections. Park, who …
North Korea’s Rocket Launch: Diplomacy Goes Up in Smoke
North Korea is throwing a party this week, and it’s bound to upset all its neighbors. The isolated authoritarian regime says it plans to put a weather satellite into orbit some time between April 12 and 16 as part of celebrations …
North Korea Missile Launch Fails
The Hermit Kingdom’s Rocket Disintegrates Shortly After Takeoff
How the Extreme Right and Left Will Affect France’s Presidential Race
Money time in France’s current presidential election won’t come before the May 6 run-off between probable mainstream finalists, incumbent conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist François Hollande. For now, though, that …
The Günter Grass Debacle: Blowback from Anti-Israel Poem Envelopes Both Sides
Günter Grass, the German author who waited until he’d won a Nobel Prize before revealing that he’d served in Hitler’s SS, might seem an unlikely vessel for criticism of Israel (in 2006 he confessed that in 1944, at the age of …
Asia Reacts to Earthquake and Tsunami Threat
A 8.5 magnitude earthquake struck off Indonesia’s Sumatra island prompting an Indian Ocean-wide tsunami alert.
Indian Ocean Earthquake: Asia Heeds Lessons of the Past as Tsunami Watch Is Lifted
The most dangerous thing that can happen in the eerie vacuum between an earthquake and a tsunami is nothing. Once a tsunami warning is issued, the size of the wave and the number of minutes before it arrives comes into focus …
Must-Reads From Around the World: April 11, 2012
Syria on Deadline — Even as Syrian activists reported fresh rounds of shelling Wednesday, the U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan expressed cautious optimism that the Syrian regime would honor the April 12 ceasefire plan. Analysts …
The U.S. and Brazil: Why the Two Hemispheric Giants Should Take Each Other More Seriously
After I and a number of colleagues wrote last month about possible U.S.-Brazil friction on the eve of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s visit to America, a Brazilian diplomat I respect contacted me about what he felt were …
Does Zardari’s Visit Signal A Pragmatic Shift in India-Pakistan Relations?
China and India have a way of separating thorny questions of geo-politics from practical matters of trade. It’s a diplomatic strategy that, despite its obvious limitations, has helped keep border disputes at a minimum and …
Did British Ministers Approve the Illegal Rendition and Torture of Libyan Dissidents?
On March 7, 2004, in a joint CIA-MI6 operation, Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhadj and his wife Fatima Bouchar were arrested at Bangkok’s airport. Belhadj, who had sought to undermine Muammar Gaddafi’s regime for years as the …