A used car salesman, a Mexican narco snitch, and an Iranian spook walk into a bar. What is this, says the ex-CIA barman, some kind of a joke?
Let’s just say that the ostensibly Iranian plot to blow up Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington is not yet proving to be the smoking gun that allows the Obama Administration to rally …
The surreal photographs from the battle-lines in Sirt keep coming. First we had the guitar-strumming guerrilla, serenading his comrades as they took on the last remnants of the Gaddafi regime. Now we have the picture above, which says hopefully more about the humor than the ambition of Libya’s NTC fighters.
For many people outside France, François Hollande is the man—or the name, at least—they’ve heard will be leading the French left’s effort to oust conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in general elections next spring. But for many people beyond France, that’s all they know about Hollande–apart perhaps from the supposedly …
If there is a bright note to the sad storyof Wang Yue, the two-year old who was ignored by more than a dozen passers-by after a hit-and-run collision, it is 57-year-old scrap picker Chen Xianmei, who stopped to help the gravely injured toddler. The incident has prompted a vast outpouring of online anger and soul searching as to how …
With the Occupy Wall Street protests gaining steam in the U.S., it seems obvious to link the movement with the other grassroots movement that recently shook up American politics: the Tea Party. President Barack Obama did it this morning, telling ABC that the protesters in downtown New York are “not that different” from the Tea Party: …
As momentous as Tuesday’s release of Sergeant Gilad Shalit and 477 Palestinian prisoners (with another 550 to freed within two months) may be, it is unlikely to be a game-changer — or a milestone on the road to peace. Indeed, while the spectacle of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu breaking the ostensible taboo on negotiating with …
Bolivia this month is accusing India’s Jindal Steel & Power Ltd. of failing to honor its $2.1 billion investment commitment to develop the Mutún iron ore mine and smelting works. Jindal in turn claims Bolivia isn’t providing it sufficient gas and electrical power to get the job done. Such disputes between Latin American governments …
Though it may seem cliché to say so, it’s nevertheless true that with his party’s 2012 presidential nomination now secured, the hard work for French Socialist candidate François Hollande is about to begin. With the first round of presidential polling a bit more than six months away, the popular Hollande now becomes the …
Top officials of China’s ruling Communist Party began a four-day, closed-door session Saturday which will be scrutinized for clues into the leadership transition that begins next year. The Central Committee’s annual plenum may also offer insight into how the authorities intend to promote, and control, cultural expression. The …
It used to feel like tunnels were the only way to get into Gaza. And on the Strip’s western boundary, they still are – dozens of actual subterranean passages that run from sovereign Egypt on one side to the Palestinian territory on the other, freightways to haul in everything from tuna to Toyotas to lions.
But the way in from …
Liam Fox must have realized he could not outrun his fate. And so on Oct. 14 Britain’s Secretary of State for Defense delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street. “I have repeatedly said that the national interest must always come before personal interest,” he wrote. “I now have to hold myself to my own standard.”
Fox’s resignation …
In the three days since a Ukrainian court convicted ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of abuse of power, the country’s president Viktor Yanukovych has been portrayed as a modern-day Joseph Stalin. Leaders from Brussels to Moscow accused his regime of staging a show trial in which his main political rival was sentenced to seven years …
Paris has always maintained a nervy relationship with the nation’s regions—a remnant, to some degree, of Jacobin centralization of the country from the capital, and imposition of policies, administrative structures, culture and language of Paris upon France’s diverse provincial populations. Indeed, in his brilliant 2007 book, …
