The town of Zawiyah has been cleansed of dissent. A rebel stronghold in the early days of the revolt against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, this oil town on the western coast of Libya was the site of a pitched street battle that culminated in a rout that saw scores of antiregime protesters killed and hundreds more injured. Fresh green …
With No End to Crisis in Sight, Residents and Fishermen Are Fighting Back
From the earliest days of Japan’s triple disaster, the residents forced to flee their homes in the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have not had a lot of information to work with. Many only found out that they were supposed to leave by grace of the internet or the evening news, and when they …
Global Briefing April 6, 2011: Bad Deals, Tough Guys and Missing Persons
Missing Persons — A state-run newspapers blasted Ai Weiwei today, warning that he’ll “pay the price” for his choices. TIME’s Austin Ramzy explains why that’s definitely bad news for the missing Chinese artist.
Tough Guys — What’s French for ‘muscular’? Because that’s what the New York Times is calling France’s military posture. …
Party Police: Cops Raid Gay Bar in Shanghai
A weekend raid at a club in Shanghai was a stark reminder of what can happen when homophobia meets the all-too-heavy hand of the law. Shanghaiist reports:
Early Sunday morning, police stormed into Q Bar in the middle of a gogo boy performance, turned the lights on, and shoved about 70 bar employees and patrons (save the foreigners)
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Party-Run Newspaper Slams Detained Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei
The domestic media silence surrounding the detention of Ai Weiwei was broken today by a Communist Party-run newspaper, which declared that the Chinese artist and activist “will be judged by history, but he will pay a price for his special choice.” The strident tone of today’s article, which was published in the Chinese and …
In Gaddafi’s Tripoli, Visions of Doomsday and an Endgame
Such is the hothouse atmosphere of the Rixos Hotel, where the Tripoli press corps remains imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime, that any new source of information, be it a shopkeeper in a bazaar who manages to slip out a disparaging word about Libya’s leader or a rumor of the man himself out in the streets, sends reporters into a frenzied …
Grameen’s Yunus Loses Appeal, But His Fight Continues
Bangladesh’s Supreme Court has rejected Mohammad Yunus’ appeal to continue as head of the Grameen Bank. This is bad news for Yunus, certainly, but not the end. Yunus, a pioneer of microfinance and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize, has been under pressure for months, with the Bangladeshi government first floating charges of financial …
On the Road with Disaster Vets in Burma
Veterinarians notice things walking around in this world that you and I do not. In December, I traveled to the far north of Burma with a team of disaster response vets who work for the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). Two months earlier, the region around Sittwe, the capital of northern Rakhine State, had been hit hard …
‘Sweet Micky’: Is Haiti’s Next President Democrat or Demagogue?
When Haiti’s presidential election got under way last summer, the big question was how large a role the nation’s large and disaffected youth vote would play. We now know the answer: Huge. Half of Haiti’s population of 9 million is under the age of 25, and Monday evening, April 4, that cohort’s candidate, flamboyant former …
Global Briefing, April 5, 2011: This Is an Intervention
Forcing the Issue — “Employing U.S. military power to overthrow Gaddafi would do Libya more harm than good,” argues Romesh Ratnesar.
After Unrest — In the New Yorker, Dexter Filkins chronicles the uprising in Yemen and considers what comes next; Read TIME’s account of the country’s ‘Bloody Monday’ here.
Battle Lines — …
Mapping the Missing in China’s ‘Jasmine Crackdown’
This map, created by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong-based concern group, shows people who have been detained or disappeared in China since February. It was published on Mar. 31 and includes only cases confirmed by CHRD. It does not include the case of Ai Weiwei, the artist and activist who vanished this weekend. For more
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Ivory Coast: As Violence Intensifies, U.N. Finally Enters the Fray
For weeks, the U.N.’s mission in the Ivory Coast has sat pinned down in its quarters, watching as this West African country lurched toward civil war. An escalating conflict between the rival forces of Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara has led to hundreds, probably thousands of deaths and has displaced, by some counts, over a million …
Libya Peace Negotiations Are Already Underway
That Libya’s epic struggle for power has slipped quietly out of the headlines is not surprising, in a media culture with limited attention span and an addiction to tidy (and preferably happy) endings. Libya is looking unlikely to provide either anytime soon: A military stalemate is unlikely to be broken by a rebel force of limited …