The Inter-American Court of Human Rights concluded this week what just about everyone in the western hemisphere already knew: leading Venezuelan opposition politician Leopoldo López was denied due process of law in 2008, when socialist President Hugo Chávez’s government barred him from running in elections for six years because …
Israel Exposed: Hundred disrobe to draw eyes to the Dead Sea
The Dead Sea came briefly to life on Saturday, as 1,200 Israelis shed their clothes and posed with their arms at their sides for the American photographer Spencer Tunick, whose business is making art from public nudity on a mass scale.
The idea was to draw attention to the steady decline of the famously salty lake, which exposes …
Why Palestinian Leaders are Doing Obama a Favor By Taking Their U.N. Bid to the Security Council
Friday’s announcement by President Mahmoud Abbas that he will next week present the U.N. Security Council with a formal request for U.N. membership of a sovereign state of Palestine may be better news for Israel and the U.S. than it might appear, even if it confirms the failure of the Obama Administration to stop the …
How Did Other Countries “Lose” in Libya?
In TIME’s international editions, Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican Foreign Minister, rates the “winners and losers” of the Libyan imbroglio, praising Western leaders like French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British P.M. David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama for pressing for intervention. Countries that abstained from action …
As Terror Attacks Continue, U.S. and India Step Up Cooperation
The U.S. State Department announced yesterday that it had “designated the Indian Mujahideen as a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” a decision that makes it illegal under U.S. law to provide material support or resources to the group, and freezes all its assets in the U.S. The new designation may not, by itself, make much difference in …
At the World Economic Forum, A Lot of Love for China—Except from Some Chinese
The streets of the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, which has been hosting the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Annual Meeting of the New Champions, are lined with cheery red banners that read in English: “Cooperation, Harmony and Win For All.” Yet even as business leaders flocked to sessions on topics like “new …
Why the Obama Administration is Failing in its Efforts to Stop the Palestinians’ U.N. Bid
The Obama Administration is flailing — and failing — in its eleventh-hour efforts to stop a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood next week. It’s as if Washington has woken in a panic after sleeping through its diplomatic alarm clock, and discovering that it has missed history’s bus. The Administration has dispatched delegations of …
The UBS ‘Rogue Trader’ Scandal: Just Who Is Kweku Adoboli?
By all accounts Kweku Adoboli was a quiet, affable guy. An amateur photographer who loved music and cycling, friends in his artsy circle hardly knew he was a banker, let alone one who’d be accused of losing UBS $2 billion in rogue trades. “He was a great fan of beautiful things,” says Sanjhana Moon, a photographer who met …
Palestinian Official: Bid for U.N. Recognition Will “Salvage the Peace Process”
Slowly and possibly surely, the Palestinian approach to the United Nations endgame is emerging. And it sizes up as a relatively moderate strategy, one that suggests holding back on any attempt to charge Israel in newly available international courts as long as Israel stops expanding its settlements on Palestinian territory.
That, …
Chinese Dissidents’ Stories of Abuse in Detention Emerge
One of the great surprises about the widespread crackdown on dissent in China this spring was how many of those who were detained and later released have remained quiet. While the experiences of a few who were detained, such as the artist Ai Weiwei, did emerge, little is known about what was endured by many of the more than 100 …
Pakistan’s Floods: Deja Vu, All Over Again
These days when it rains in South Asia, it doesn’t just pour — it floods. A month of monsoon squalls has deluged hundreds of towns and villages in northwest India and Pakistan. The latter has seen the most acute flooding, and, on all evidence, has been the least prepared for it. At least 233 people have already died and 300,000 …
George Osborne, Anthony Weiner and Why Neither the U.K. nor the U.S. Press Knows How to Cover Sex
Though you wouldn’t believe it from the hacking scandal and the panoply of salacious headlines gracing Britain’s papers daily, the U.K. actually has tougher libel laws than the U.S. There is no guaranteed freedom of speech in Britain, and the truth is judged on face value with no regard to intent, i.e., even if it’s an …
American Hikers’ Fate Again Caught in Iran’s Domestic Power Struggle
Once, the two American hikers still being held by Tehran after inadvertently straying into Iranian territory while hiking along the Iran-Iraq border two years ago could be seen as pawns in the strategic confrontation between their own country and the Islamic Republic. A simple misunderstanding that might have been easily resolved …