Suspicious Minds – Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reveals that elderly Communist Party members in the Chinese province of Yunnan have been questioned after they penned a letter calling for the sacking of Zhou Yongkang, the country’s top security official, amid rumors of continued infighting following the downfall of Bo Xilai. …
Latin America
U.S. Insists Its Anti-Drug Agents Did Not Fire on Innocent Hondurans
Thanks to sensational atrocities like the 49 headless corpses dumped on a highway last weekend, Mexico tends to grab most of the world’s drug-war attention. But as we’ve reported, the western hemisphere’s most violent …
Must-Reads from Around the World, May 15, 2012
Deal in Nepal – The Kathmandu Post reports that Nepal’s major political parties have agreed to a future form of governance, with executive powers split between a directly elected president and a prime minister elected by parliament. “Negotiators from across party lines said that though the mixed model had some weak points, including a …
Can Mexico’s Presidential Hopefuls Stop the Bodies Piling Up?
Drug thugs dumped 49 bloodied and dismembered corpses on a northern Mexican highway on Sunday, May 13. We journalists are finding little new to say, few fresh insights to offer, about these all too frequent narco-massacres in …
Is Hugo Chávez Preparing Venezuela for His Departure?
“Get your personal affairs in order.” It’s the hardest thing doctors have to tell cancer patients who are as ill as media reports suggest Hugo Chávez is. With an election looming in less than five months, the 57-year-old …
Florida Takes Cuba Policy to the Absurd
Cuba has always been a volatile issue in Florida, but what played out in Miami this week bordered on the farcical. The Florida legislature, prodded by the politically potent Cuban exile lobby, recently passed a bill that bars …
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Mexico Takes Deserved Bows (and Some Boos) at the World Economic Forum in Puerto Vallarta
Argentine President Cristina Fernández did Mexican President Felipe Calderón a big favor this week when, on April 16, she expropriated the Argentine holdings of Spanish oil giant Repsol. The move shocked global capitalists and …
Must-Reads from Around the World: April 17, 2012
Thinly Veiled – Following Monday’s U.N. Security Council censure of North Korea for its recent failed rocket launch, China’s Global Times issued a stern editorial — “Pyongyang must remember to heed China’s advice.” The semi-official mouthpiece continued: “Pyongyang should treat China as a friend as China does it. It will pay the price …
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Beyond the Secret Service Scandal: Why the Americas Summits Matter
Before the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, this past weekend, much of the talk was about the U.S.’s dwindling influence in Latin America. Now, in the summit’s wake — after a U.S. Secret Service scandal …
Colombia’s President Talks with TIME About Castro, Capitalism and His Country’s Comeback
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 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 …