RAI2 (Italy) SANT’AGOSTINO – The magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna has left at least seven dead and dozens wounded. The property damage is also extensive in a region around the historic city of Ferrara. In this video from state broadcaster RAI, we see a portion of the local city […]
Category: Geopolitics
EL DIARIO NUEVO (Nicaragua) MANAGUA – Is Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega the “Ho Chi Minh of Latin America?” That’s apparently what Surinam’s new ambassador in Nicaragua believes. During a televised swearing in ceremony in Managua this week, the ambassador, Subhas Chandra Mungra, said that Ortega, like the deceased Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, stands out […]
More than 30 people were killed last August when NATO jets bombed the small Libyan town of Majer. NATO says it was a “legitimate” target. Villagers tell a very different story, of innocent victims, and pain made worse by NATO’s
The Indian government is intensifying its fight against Maoist rebels in its central and eastern regions. In the central state of Chhattisgarh, policemen are being trained for jungle combat in real life conditions, learning to kill snakes and rappel from
CHINA TIMES (Taiwan) BEIJING – The U.S. ambassador to Beijing, Gary Locke, has become a lightning rod for online debate in China about the ethics (and wealth) of political leaders — both American and Chinese. In contrast to the high-spending lifestyle of many top Chinese politicians, the 62-year-old ambassador has been known to purchase cups […]
ACTUEL (Morocco) CASABLANCA – Should Morocco abandon the French language? The question is now being openly debated after the government announced it was pushing for more Arabic programming on public television, reports Moroccan magazine Actuel in a special feature devoted to the issue. Morrocan Culture Minister Mustapha El Khalfi has made reassurances that French programming […]
CORRIERE DELLA SERA (Italy) MILAN – Police have seized a seaside hotel complex on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria believed to have belonged to the family of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Valued at 20 million euros, the resort and adjoining terrain is part of some 1.3 billion euros worth of Italian property held by […]
[dailymotion https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xquaco expand=1]Nicolas Sarkozy quitte l’Elysée au bras de son… par LeNouvelObservateur Francois Hollande has become the 24th president of the French Republic following a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in central Paris. This is a crucial day for French politics: -Watch the passage of power between François Hollande and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy […]
Editorial: Whoever is “lucky” enough to win Mexico’s upcoming presidential election will inherit a gruesome drug war that has already killed some 55,000. Just this week, 49 headless corpses turned up near the northern city of Mo
The fourth U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue yielded an important reform: Chinese state-owned firms must turn over a bigger chunk of their profits to the government to help finance public spending. U.S. companies are pleased — and ordinary Chine
XINHUA NET, FENGHUANG NET (China) BEIJING – The Beijing Police have just announced a “Hundred Days Special Action” from May 15th to the end of August, aiming to “clean up” the foreigners who have entered, stayed, and worked in the capital illegally. This action includes conducting a census of various communities, assaulting various key sites, […]
NOVAYA GAZETA, KOMMERSANT (Russia) MOSCOW – In the aftermath of the “March of the Millions’ on May 6th and the arrest of several hundred protesters that night, an improvised camp sprung up overnight in Moscow in the Park of Chistye Prudy, Novaya Gazeta reports. The camp looks in many ways like the protest camps that […]
Despite political highjacking, corruption and lack of information, a campaign to promote insecticide-treated mosquito nets is helping the Democratic Republic of Congo fight its number one child killer: malaria.
NOVAYA GAZETA (Russia) MOSCOW – Roughly 60% of synthetic narcotics in Europe are made with an ingredient that is illegally exported from Russia, possibly with the help of high-ranking officials in the Russian Drug Enforcement Agency and Security Agency, Novaya Gazeta reports. The allegations stem from an audit started after a former top-level officer in […]
CORRIERE DELLA SERA (Italy) MILAN – An anarchist group claimed responsibility Friday for the recent shooting of a top Italian nuclear energy executive, calling the victim “one of the many sorcerers of the atom.” The Milan daily Corriere della Sera received a lengthy text by regular post from the “Olga cell” of the Federazione Anarchica […]
Analysis: The Obama administration has made its intentions clear in shifting US foreign policy attention toward Asia. Why has Beijing failed to understand the importance of strong diplomacy in its own backyard?
Editorial: From Spain’s indignados to Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, fringe groups are gaining strength in Europe. And while they don’t tend to share much common ground, together they are posing a region-wide challenge to
LES INROCKUPTIBLES (France) ATHENS– “The time has come for this country’s traitors to fear us,” said Nikolaos Michaloliakos, leader of the Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi movement that won 7% of the seats in Greece’s Parliament this past Sunday. Until a few weeks, reports the Inrockuptibles magazine, no one had heard of these skinheads. Here’s the […]
LE JOURNAL DU MALI (Mali) BAMAKO – Want to try and guess which part of the world has a projected growth rate of 6% for 2012? South Asia? South America? Wrong – It’s Africa! “Africa is on the brink of a major transformation,” declares Elsie Kanza, World Economic Forum director for Africa. So long associated […]
Analysis: The 10-year alliance between the US and Pakistan has always been shaky. But a year of bitter disputes have put the final nail in their partnership, leaving Pakistan to set out in search of new “friends,” including age-old rival
Angela Merkel openly supported Nicolas Sarkozy during France’s just concluded presidential campaign. Now that her man was beaten by Socialist candidate François Hollande, Merkel is ready to make concessions on growth, but won’t budge on deficit.
Essay: With his hyperactivity and “cop-in-chief” attitude, Nicolas Sarkozy was unlike any French president before him. His failure to win a second term is due to his own mistakes and an economic crisis he couldn’t contain. Now F
Police arrested nearly 600 during demonstrations against Vladimir Putin’s latest presidential inauguration. Hundreds of others were injured in the melee and one photographer died. Putin’s press secretary said later that police should hav
Op-Ed: François Hollande’s winning campaign was cut from the cloth of the last Socialist to lead France, François Mitterrand, who swept into office in 1981. But to best serve France (and the French left) Hollande must break from his onetime mento
Essay: Dominique Moisi, a special advisor at the French Institute of International Relations, has a few words of advice for president-elect François Hollande. His first plea: Let’s not waste the next five years.
François Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency, with a final tally of 51.6%, against 48.38%. Change was also in the air in elections in Greece and Serbia.
Even as they share the same passion for politics, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande have very different world views — and polar opposite personalities.
As a new Truth Commission begins to retrace the crimes of Brazil’s military dictatorship, one officer admits to incinerating 10 corpses of people who disappeared from 1964 to 1985. Cláudio Guerra has since become an evangelical pastor.
Since the end of the civil war, many of the refugees exiled in neighboring African countries have been coming home to the Democratic Republic of Congo, only to find that their homes have been stolen or sold, and that there’s little they can do ab
Drug wars, poverty and organized crime combine to help Latin America dominate the list of most deadly cities on earth. Add in the U.S., and the Americas count for almost all of the top 50.
Along the mountainous border between Sudan and the now independent country of South Sudan, a German health worker continues to treat members of the local Nuba population, even as Russian-made Antonov planes litter the war zone with bombs.
The nomadic Tuareg people had hoped for more freedom in what is now a disintegrating situation in the West African nation of Mali. Islamic radicals have taken advantage of a power vacuum to exert their authority. A look up close with Tuareg rebels.
Germany is likely to approve an E.U. mandate allowing troops to fight Somali pirates not just in the Gulf of Aden, but also along the shore. Is Europe setting itself up for another Blackhawk Down?
Op-Ed: The Philippines has overreacted in the ongoing dispute between Manila and Beijing, looking to build a regional coalition against China in claims over territory in the South China Sea. Still, Beijing must learn to manage the “small powers&a
Exiled in neighboring Mauritania, this 49-year-old exiled firebrand and leader of the Tuareg insurgency calls on the West to accept their demands for independence from Mali, and to get involved in fighting off Islamists in her homeland.
Inga Engh landed the case of a lifetime when she was chosen to prosecute confessed mass murderer Anders Breivik. Cool and collected in the courtroom, this mother of two boys has admitted that there is inevitably a personal relationship to this case.
Analysis: As China, in a show of force, “leaks” pictures of its new J-22 fighter jet, one wonders if the future of tomorrow’s skies will be ruled by stealth jets or rather by unmanned combat drones.
Russia is wary of plans by NATO to build missile defense bases in Poland and Romania. The military alliance insists Moscow has nothing to fear, that Russia and NATO are not “enemies.” Why then, Russia would like to know, is NATO unwilling to build a joint
Analysis: An Egyptian scholar delves into the recent history of Latin America, where countries found the tough leaders necessary to move away from military juntas. With the way Egypt is limping toward its first presidential election, such a scenario looks
Sex-symbol turned actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has endorsed right-wing party candidate Marine Le Pen for France’s presidential elections. A critic of immigration, the former beauty has been cited five times for “inciting ra