(And why that’s a good thing)
Category: Geopolitics
Since soon after the conflict began in 2011, Turkey has always been fiercely opposed to Damascus. Now opposition elements of al-Qaeda across the border may be another reason to act.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a crackdown on trafficking rings is not enough – there is also the question of parental responsbility. And extreme poverty.
MUNICH — The Israeli General Consulate in Munich has finally found permanent premises that sources say is likely next door to the former Nazi Party headquarters. The building’s location is virtually back-to-back with the so-called Führerbau that the Nazis built as a representation venue for Adolf Hitler, sources tell Süddeutsche Zeitung. Directly next door, built […]
Syria’s longtime foreign minister has shown no sign of opening during the Geneva peace talks, which resumed this week. But Walid Muallem may be the world’s last best hope.
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Sochi: The Return Of The Cossacks
Patriotism over tolerance, says the military-minded ethnic population helping to ensure (though unarmed) Olympic security as Cossacks reassert their historic role.
As the Castro reign lives its final phase, the future of Cuba is uncertain. This is not necessarily good news for Mexico.
French President Francois Hollande is as popular in official circles in Washington as he is unpopular with the citizens of the country that elected him. Story of a unique alliance.
During the country’s civil war in the 1980s, countless children were abducted and sold off into adoption. Some in Europe are now joining the hunt to know their origins.
A national referendum to limit new immigrants shows Swiss society split along political, geographic and linguistic lines. It also leaves the nation isolated from its EU neighbors.
Since its inception, Israel has exempted ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service and offered them a host of subsidies. But as demographics change, many say the policy must end.
BOR — Apart from the birds of prey gliding in the hot air, everything is as motionless as the corpse with the mummified face. It is a man, judging by his clothes, and he had curled up in a hole no bigger than a basin, hoping to be invisible in the grass. He had clearly […]
Olympics kick off in Russia, protests continue in Ukraine, and other recent events captured by photographers around the world, in conjunction with ZUMA photo agency.
MAKHACHKALA — A woman is standing near the police cordons, looking into the dark space where the Golden Empire restaurant stood until a few moments earlier. First came the grenades, and then a car exploded in front of the entrance. All that’s left now is debris. When the woman repeatedly tries calling her sister, a […]
Sochi Olympics, World War I and other events near and far have prompted some interesting quotes in recent days.
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Inside Egypt’s War On Journalists
Accused of producing “false news” in the country, 20 Al Jazeera staff members have been detained in Egypt. What’s driving the crackdown? What will defenders of free press do now?
Though chances still remain low, Israel wants to be prepared as threats grow of a major global boycott of its goods, like what happened in South Africa in the 1980s.
MBALLING — Some 20 people, all officially cured of leprosy, are sitting together at the functional rehabilitation center in Mballing, Senegal. But seeing them calls to mind the ancestral fears linked with this disease: club foots, mere leg or arm stumps, hands without fingers, misshapen faces, washed-out eyes that can no longer be opened. The […]
One tortured by the regime, another by Islamist rebels, both offer evidence of the worst kind of brutality that reigns in Syria today.
Read the news by the numbers: tourism stats, baby-naming bonuses, Toyota sales and more.
Since the end of the Cold War, from the Middle East to Africa, almost every military intervention carried out by the world’s top powers leads to regime change. But rarely to stability.
Three musicians, a divisive Middle East leader and a soccer legend were among those to whom we bid farewell this past month.
A solar-powered hospital offers a glimmer of hope in a country still mired in poverty, and the after-effects of the massive 2010 earthquake.
LONDON — It’s that time of year again, and Super Bowl fever is definitely NOT spreading across the planet. Still, the rest of the world is slowing warming to American football, and the game will be broadcast live Sunday in more than 180 countries and in more than 30 languages, mostly on cable and satelite […]
-OpEd- I too can play the game of “I won’t think about that, so it can’t exist,” like a character tells himself in Delirium, the novel by Colombian writer Laura Restrepo. Indeed, such mental games are a national character trait. The country’s principal cinema chain Cine Colombia refused last December to show a short trailer […]
TEL AVIV — Just last week at the Davos summit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was publicly praising the hi-tech industry in Israel. Now it seems his compliments may have been a bit premature. A new report says that Palestinian hackers from Gaza have recently launched a cyber-attack on Israel that has successfully targeted government […]
And Igor Luzenko is the lucky one. The other activist with whom he was abducted, beaten and interrogated didn’t make it home alive.
”The goal of the fundamentalists is to force us to leave Bangladesh and go to India,” says one activist for the rights of religious minorities.
Beijing is making infrastructure investments in and around Minsk that no one else is prepared to make. It may be a gateway to business in both Europe, and Russia.
-OpEd- MUNICH — During these past years of economic crisis, we Europeans learned that our fate was inextricably linked to that of the banks. We’re accustomed to the idea that numbers will decide how the continent fares. A good European, then, is a thrifty European. And now the pictures from Kiev come crashing in. They […]
Clashes with the government in Ukraine and Thailand, summits in Switzerland, Daft Punk on red carpet are among the images making news…
There is power, and there is truth. Then it’s up to you what to say and do. An essay to mark Jan. 25 in an Egypt where things change and stay the same.
Seven years after the assassination of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink, silence remains on the crime of incitement to murder – just like last century’s Armenian Genocide.
The inside story of the Syrian army photographer assigned to log images of the victims of torture. One day, he’d seen enough, and joined the opposition – photos in hand.
KIEV — “Dude, are you drunk? Get out of here!” says Evgeni Dudchenko, a pro-EU protester who works security for the so-called Euromaidan movement, named for the square where the dissidents gather. He checks out everyone who wants to enter the demonstration area. “If someone is drunk, he’s out of here. Alcohol is forbidden here, […]
As overnight clashes in Kiev leave at least two dead, the Russian daily reports that the violence is being fed by nationalist groups that advocate open revolution.
BANGUI — The motorbike stops abruptly. “If the French don’t want to help us, al-Qaeda will,” the teenager shouts before driving away. All around him, this road of the Begoua neighborhood in north Bangui — the Central African Republic’s capital — is covered in bundles full of the belongings of hundreds of people waiting to […]
The comparisons to the present are striking: a 1830s Swiss banker who helped launch the newly formed nation of Greece on the back of credit it could never pay back.
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UK’s Risk Of Double-Dip Secession
It’s not recession, but secession that’s worrying many: Scotland will vote on independence from the UK, while Britain’s own potential exit from the EU could stunt an economic rebound.