Britain’s long-running hacking saga has finally seen one of its protagonists jailed, the first such penalty since the News of the World‘s royal editor Clive Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were imprisoned in 2007 for intercepting voicemails intended for Princes William and Harry and their aides and friends. On Aug. 2 …
E.U.
Weekend Violence Increases Fears Of Libya’s Opposition Splitting Apart
It didn’t take the prescient gifts of Nostradamus to foresee that Thursday’s killing of Abdel Fattah Younes –commander of Libya’s anti-Gaddafi rebel forces–would exacerbate the tensions and divisions already rife within the opposition’s leadership. But it is a little surprising just how swiftly the suspicions of treason and …
Preliminary Report On 2009 Air France Crash Indicates Pilot Responsibility
Some of the mystery behind the tragedy may be solved, but that doesn’t mean fighting is over about who’s to blame for the 2009 crash of Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. New findings released Friday by French investigators indicated pilots of the craft were insufficiently trained for the emergency situation …
Mysterious Assassination Of Libyan Rebel Commander Threatens Further Division Of Anti-Gaddafi Forces
Details surrounding Thursday’s assassination of the commander of Libyan rebel forces remained confused on Friday, though one thing does seem clear amid the uncertainty: the killing isn’t good news for insurgents battling Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, or the Western nations backing their effort. Indeed, initial reaction to the death of …
Disarray on Gaddafi’s Fate, Top Rebel’s Killing Highlight Struggling Libya War Effort
(Update: The mysterious circumstances of Thursday’s killing of General Abdul Fattah Younes, military chief of staff of the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council, suggest the rebel war effort is teetering in crisis. The Independent reports that Younes had been in rebel custody at the time of his killing, having been arrested …
New Violence in Kosovo Could Pose a Quandary for an Overstretched NATO
Throughout NATO’s war in Libya, the operation there has been compared with the one in Kosovo in 1999, in which 72 days of bombing Serbia forced the withdrawal of government forces from the province, where they’d been engaged in a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the ethnic-Albanian majority. But while Libya has dragged on twice …
Lame Pop Icons: France’s (Other) Cultural Exception
This kind of mind-boggling violence couldn’t happen anywhere but in France. Seriously.
On July 27, the imitator of a dead crooner no one outside France cares about stabbed a rival impersonator of a decrepit rock star few people beyond French borders have ever heard of (and have run from, ears plugged, if they have). Call it the …
New Developments On Libya Bring New Confusion About An Outcome
Another day in Europe, more mixed messages on just how Western allies in the NATO-led Libyan air intervention plan to end a campaign that has now officially attained “slog” status. Just hours after comments Tuesday from British officials saying they’d accept embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi remaining free in post-war Libya so long …
The West Slowly Backing Away From the Libyan Military Operation
It’s getting harder and harder to believe there’ll eventually be a resolution to Libya’s civil war that will allow anyone to claim Muammar Gaddafi lost to rebel forces—or was humbled by members of the NATO-led coalition waging air strikes against him. Indeed, it’s becoming increasingly clear as the weeks rush by that …
New Revelations In France’s DSK Attempted Rape Case Get Surreal — And Really Icky
If New York prosecutors are feeling glum about the credibility concerns about their victim in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case, they might want to cast a glance at a similar attempted rape inquiry in Paris. Because even if the flurry of follies that have suddenly begun swirling around that French investigation won’t …
France’s Counter-Terrorism Ace Finds Himself Under Scrutiny
For the past three decades he’s been known as “The Sheriff”, “The Admiral”, and more generally as the world-famous icon of French counter-terrorism. The pipe-smoking, Magnum-packing judge became counter-terrorism’s international celebrity through exploits that included (but were far from limited to) tracking down and …
Sure, ‘Gaddafi Must Go’, But What Else Did U.S. Officials Tell the Libyan Leader’s Envoys?
Washington insists that the U.S. officials who met with representatives of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Tunisia last week were not negotiating; they simply went to deliver one message: “Gaddafi must go.” There’s no reason to doubt that this demand was the center-piece of what the Americans told Gaddafi’s emissaries, since Obama …
Strauss-Kahn Still Casting Shadows Over French Socialist Presidential Primaries
With expectations high that New York prosecutors may drop their sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn prior to their looming Aug. 1 court date, the former International Monetary Fund chief is apparently trying to resume something closer to the normal life he led before his May 14 arrest. On July 15, Strauss-Kahn and wife …