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 …
Borders
Poor Panama. China’s Just Not That Into You.
The list of countries that have chosen diplomatic relations with Taiwan over mainland China reads like an exercise in national obscurity. The 23-nation compendium includes Burkina Faso, Tuvalu and Saint Kitts and Nevis, along with Palau, Swaziland and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Nevertheless, the People’s Republic has assiduously …
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 …
Have Foreigners Unwittingly Adopted Victims of Baby-Selling in China?
In recent years, one of China’s most beloved exports has been babies adopted by overseas individuals eager to complete their families and help needy children. Now an investigation by respected Chinese magazine Caixin has uncovered evidence of Chinese family-planning officials taking children from local couples who supposedly had …
Obama, Now the Warrior, Wants to Revive Immigration Reform
President Obama is reaping a windfall of political capital from the extermination of Osama bin Laden, and he plans to spend a chunk of it on immigration reform. During a Cinco de Mayo celebration with Mexican-Americans at the White House this week, Obama announced he’ll give a major immigration speech during a visit to the border city of …
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 …
Rights Group Says Thailand Murdered Civilians, Urges Investigation
A year after a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in Bangkok that killed at least 90 people, not a single official has been charged. Now, Human Rights Watch, an influential American NGO, says they’ve collected evidence that government snipers targeted civilians, including unarmed medical personnel. Their claims are laid out …
Who’s the Other Islamic Militant Nabbed This Year in Abbottabad?
In January of this year, in the same Pakistani town of Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden met his demise, a senior Indonesian militant named Umar Patek was arrested. One of the leaders of the al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), Patek is believed to have helped coordinate the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian …
The Other Shoe? Egypt Moves to Ease Gaza Siege
Egypt’s announcement that it will open its border crossing with the Gaza Strip — loosening the siege of the Palestinian enclave Egypt has helped Israel carry out — has the sound of the other shoe dropping. Coming one day after word that the post-Mubarak government had brokered a tentative unity accord between rival Palestinian …
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 …
Sarkozy and Berlusconi Want to Scrap Europe’s Open Borders
With their governments locked in conflict over how to deal with around 25,000 of Tunisians fleeing the chaos of their homeland for stability in Europe, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Italian opposite Silvio Berlusconi banded together Tuesday in the common cause of dumping their problem squarely in the European Union’s lap. …
World Bank to East Timor: We Messed Up
East Timor was supposed to be the poster child for nation-building. In 2002, after two centuries of Portuguese rule and two decades of Indonesian occupation, this tiny half-island became the century’s first country. Its path to nationhood was paved by a host of international organizations keen to make the fledgling state a model of …
There He Goes Again: Threatening To Suspend Schengen Accords, Sarkozy Drifts To the Extreme Right
It would be tempting to give French President Nicolas Sarkozy points for being consistent, except his incessant efforts to approximate the positions of surging extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen have proven so catastrophic it’s difficult not to wonder if the Elysée isn’t suffering from a deep and dysfunctional learning disability. …