For this story on Scottish independence out in this week’s International dead tree edition of TIME, I sat down on Sept. 30 with Alex Salmond at Bute House, the official residence of the Scottish First Minister. The following are excerpts from the more than hour-long interview.
TIME: The elections…
AS: We won.
Your …
Global Spin’s weekend rental movie recommendations to keep you up to speed with world events, by Tony Karon and Ishaan Tharoor
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKq3eTl1LjE&feature=related]
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
We start this week with Francesco Rosi’s lovely screen adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel …
They may be clichés, but the phrases “life isn’t always fair”, and “things don’t necessarily work out the way you’d like” are cruel realities that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has to be ruefully mulling over just now. Rather than basking in the sunlight of a France-presided G20 summit meant to usher in major …
And now, it’s 11. On Nov. 3, a Tibetan nun set herself on fire in a remote Tibetan-inhabited county of China’s Sichuan province called Tawu (or Daofu in Chinese), according to exile Tibetan groups. Nine Tibetan monks (or former monks) and two nuns have self-immolated this year, the despairing acts of a people who contend their …
When I first came to Beijing 15 years ago, the toughest part of getting a taxi was finding a driver who was awake. The Chinese capital was much slower paced then, and cabbies would often follow up their lunch with a one or two hour siesta. The hours of 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. were a taxi wasteland, unless you were willing to risk waking a …
New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a 122-page report detailing the “abusive conditions” and lax safety standards of Chinese-run mines operating in the southern African nation of Zambia. Titled “You’ll Be Fired if You Refuse,” the report is one of the more targeted recent critiques of the effect of Beijing’s growing influence …
Now that Uruguay has revoked a 25-year-old amnesty for human rights crimes committed during the country’s 1973-85 military dictatorship, citizens are coming forward in droves this week to file charges against former officers, soldiers and cops. Uruguay was one of South America’s last holdouts when it came to annulling amnesty …
All week Israel has thrummed with talk of launching a military strike on Iran. It began with published hints that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to move forward on plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, a pre-emptive move that he, along with his defense minister, Ehud Barak, long have been described as …
When Pakistan granted India “most favored nation” (MFN) trading status yesterday (India did the same in 1995), Reuters called it “a major breakthrough that could bolster efforts to improve relations between the nuclear-armed rivals.” Some Indian officials agreed:
“It’s a very powerful step, and a welcome step in the right
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The following is a guest post from TIME contributor Lucy Birmingham.
About 100 women from Fukushima, Japan, have started a week-long sit-in at a government office in Tokyo to demand greater protection for children affected by radiation. “Many children and their families are trapped in Fukushima because they can’t afford to
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Yes, you heard right: Britain is preparing to bomb Iran. Well, that’s if the latest reported leaks from the British government are to be believed. The Guardian — not known, like some of its British rivals are, for frequent breathless front-page claims of imminent military strikes on Iran — reported Wednesday that Britain’s Defense …
Okay, so can we finally stop with the idiotic, divisive, and destructive efforts by “majority sections” of Western nations to bait Muslim members with petulant, futile demonstrations that “they” aren’t going to tell “us” what can and can’t be done in free societies? Because not only are such Islamophobic antics futile …
When something seems too good to be true, according to an old adage, it usually is. The announcement, Tuesday, by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani that legislative council elections would be held in 2013 , without a push from protestors on the street, raises the question of what kind of dark skeletons lurk behind the …