Not too long ago, the only people who would watch votes in the Greek Parliament were those paid to do so as part of their jobs. Over the last couple of years, though, ballots in the historic and often raucous Parliament House have become required viewing for audiences around the world. It seems that every […]
President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are essentially tied on the eve of Election Day, but the Democrat has a slight edge in some of the pivotal states where the election will be decided, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling released on Monday. Nationally, 48 percent of likely voters surveyed said they supported Democrat Obama […]
Forty-seven years ago this month, Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, while on a visit to Vienna, had an unscheduled chat with a young, obscure nuclear scientist called Munir Ahmad Khan. “I briefed him about what I knew of India’s nuclear programme and the facilities that I had seen myself during a visit to […]
Days after Xi Jinping became chief in 2002 of Zhejiang, China’s hotbed of private enterprise, he set out on a tour of the province. His message: more capitalism. Promoted five years later to the party’s top policy making body in Beijing, and heir-apparent to President Hu Jintao, Xi lectured students at the Communist Party’s main school, by the […]
It’s just a few hours to the end of the race, but Race isn’t going to end anytime soon. It was pretty ugly in the 2008 presidential poll, too. Yet, 2012 makes that year seem benign. On the last lap, Mitt Romney is running as the Great White Hope, a Captain America against the illegal […]
Greatness is an odd word because it signifies both quantity and quality. In the case of Russia, the two are easily confused. Even after the huge territorial losses incurred with the Soviet collapse, Russia still accounts for one-seventh of the Earth’s surface. Therefore, it has a geographical imperative to think big. Russia is unlike Britain and France, which shrank back to their middle-sized home nations after losing their […]
China is “the most threatening actor in cyberspace” as its intelligence agencies and hackers use increasingly sophisticated techniques to gain access to U.S. military computers and defense contractors, according to the draft of an annual report mandated by Congress. Chinese hackers are moving into “increasingly advanced types of operations or operations against specialized targets,” such as […]
It is not true at all that all Arab armies are merely private militias at the beck and call of the rulers. Some of them are real national armies and quite a few have turned out to be more nationalistic than others during the Arab Spring. Although it has been reported that the deposed Tunisian […]
Saudi Arabia has appointed Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as interior minister, marking a significant move towards a new generation of leaders from the kingdom’s ruling family. Prince Mohammed, a son of the late veteran interior minister Prince Nayef, who died in June, is best known as Saudi Arabia’s long-time security chief, and has garnered the praise […]
After her son was born, Terue Suzuki moved back to her childhood home on weekdays so she could work while her sister cared for the baby, leaving her husband alone in the house they shared. “It was like a weekend marriage,” Suzuki says of the arrangement 14 years ago. “I had a satisfying job and […]
