The actor’s name is associated with many things—English charm (Hugh Grant can “twinkle for Britain,” the screenwriter and director Richard Curtis told me as I researched this piece about Grant’s on- and off-screen rival Colin Firth); a weakness for beautiful women including Elizabeth Hurley and Jemima Khan; and a weakness for less …
NATO Confronts a Crisis in Libya: Its Air War Has Not Dislodged Gaddafi
The split in NATO over its Libya operation ought to come as no surprise: it’s precisely because of the differences within the alliance over the terms and goals of the mission, and the inevitably limiting effect of the alliance’s consensus-based decisionmaking, that France had been reluctant to cede command to NATO in the first place. But …
The U.S. Civil War in Global Context — Not that Big of a Deal?
April 12 marked the 150th anniversary of the shelling of Fort Sumter, the island battery in Charleston harbor whose surrender to South Carolinian secessionists signaled the start of the Civil War. And while our attention rightly falls on the war’s dramatic — and traumatic — legacy, one which is still being grappled over to this day, …
France: Hate Crimes on the Decline, Xenophobia on the Rise
The good news, according to France’s official National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), was the number of racist and anti-Semitic acts in France dropped significantly in 2010—down 13.6% from 2009. But the bad news, the CNCDH’s annual report adds, is that in contrast to that decline in the number of reported racist …
One Activist’s Hunger Strike Cows Indian Government on Corruption
Indians seem to have poured all their collective anger over corruption in government and the bureaucracy into a 71-year old social activist named Anna Hazare. He started a “fast unto death” on April 5, vowing to sacrifice himself unless the Indian government passed a law creating a “Lokpal,” an ombudsman body with the power to …
Global Briefing, April 11, 2011: Fatwas, Facebook and Fear
Revolution, Interrupted — Two months after the uprising, the Egyptian revolution is having trouble figuring out what to do next. Abigail Hauslohner explains why its old friend, the army, may be getting in the way.
Fatwas and Facebook— In a Tom Friedman-esque essay for Newsweek, Niall Ferguson argues that social media help …
Whose Human-Rights Record is Worse? The U.S. or China?
It’s a spring ritual. Each year, the U.S. publishes its report on China’s human-rights record the previous year—and then China presents its findings on America’s own performance in the same realm. Both countries, as might be expected, find plenty wrong with each other. Indeed, instead of highlighting the actual human-rights …
After Gbagbo’s Arrest, What’s Next for the Ivory Coast?
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Laurent Gbagbo, Ivory Coast’s isolated and besieged strongman, was finally seized by opposition forces in the country’s biggest city, Abidjan. His arrest follows weeks of bloodletting and mayhem in the West African country, fueled in large part by Gbago’s stubborn refusal to accept …
Why a Cease-Fire Looms in Libya
“From the very beginning we have been asking that the exit of Gaddafi and his sons take place immediately,” said Mustafa Abdul Jalil, leader of Libya’s rebel National Council on Monday, rejecting an African Union ‘roadmap’ to peace that had supposedly been accepted by Colonel Gaddafi. “We cannot consider this or any future proposal that …
Le Monde: Why There’s No Love for the Family of the Arab Spring’s Most Famous Martyr
Below is our first post in partnership with Worldcrunch, an innovative, new global news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in the leading French daily Le Monde.
The Birthplace of the Tunisian Revolution Turns Against Family Of Their Own Famous …
France’s Burqa Ban Comes Into Force With Much Noise, Little Impact
It sparked the protest, denunciation, and even arrests many had feared, yet as France’s legal ban of the burqa took effect April 11, it had many viewing the interdiction of facial coverings in public as one of the strangest and least enforceable laws in the long and cluttered French history of trying to legislate every aspect of …
Global Briefing, April 11, 2011: Muslim Cowboys, Twitter Stars and Clean Sweeps
One Month On —Four weeks after disaster hit Japan’s northeast coast, the crisis continues and questions mount, reports Krista Mahr; In an essay for TIME, Hannah Beech reflects on the tug-of-war between the country’s technological heart and its natural soul.
Prisoners of Conscience — In the New Yorker, Henrik Hertzberg rebukes the …
After Disaster, Sorrow in a Few Short Words
When an earthquake hit the Japanese town of Niigata in October 2004, Yo Yasuhara, an elderly monk, wrote these words:
It’s cold and wet/camping outdoors/aftershocks multiplying the misery
The poem, originally written in Japanese, so stirred survivors that it was carved in a memorial stone. Today, one month after the Great Tohoku …