Europe’s leaders are starting to talk, cautiously, about economic recovery. “Growth is expected to pick up in the second half of 2012 and gather speed in 2013,” Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, wrote in a Dec. 10 column in the Financial Times. Sounds encouraging—but Europe Inc. isn’t buying it. From steelmakers […]
The India–Israel friendship has been flying very well under the radar for years, arguably to the benefit of both sides. But Israel now wants a public acknowledgement of the bond. It would like India to invite President Shimon Peres for a visit to put a seal on the relationship and take it to a higher […]
Helicopter gunships hover in the sky above a battlefield. The constant sound of explosions and gunfire pierce the night for an estimated 100,000 refugees and internally displaced people. Military hospitals are full of wounded government soldiers, while bridges, communication lines and other crucial infrastructure lie in war-torn ruins. The images and sounds on the ground […]
New dynamics are emerging in the crucial Sino-Indian relationship. The two Asian giants are developing deeper global cooperation, while at the same time remaining stuck in a pattern of regional rivalry. Their disputed border, India‘s involvement in the growing confrontation in the South China Sea, and the US “pivot” towards Asia steer the Sino-Indian dynamic […]
On December 1, 2012, more than a third of eligible Kuwaiti voters went to the polls for the second time in 10 months to elect yet another parliament. Kuwaitis have been to the polls five times over the past six and a half years and have elected five parliaments, all of which were dissolved before […]
The U.S. presidential election campaign, particularly as it entered its final months, sucked up much of the oxygen in the news universe, meaning that a number of small international developments that might have otherwise drawn greater attention escaped notice. Under normal circumstances, the issues that had been overlooked would have gotten a closer look once […]
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi has cancelled a decree that gave him sweeping powers and sparked deadly violence, but did not delay this month’s referendum on a new constitution as his opponents had demanded. The announcement that Mursi had scrapped his November 22 decree followed hours of talks on Saturday at his presidential palace, billed as […]
On the eve of India’s founding, no one could have imagined how successfully it would come to navigate the international system. At that time, there were legions of skeptics who believed that the half-life of this new country would be measured in years, perhaps decades at most. The question of when India would split apart […]
STATE-RUN television is not usually the place to find news of corruption scandals involving officials close to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Murky business dealings have never been a bar to government service. When high-level bureaucrats fall, they usually go quietly. But viewers have recently been treated to quite a spectacle on Channel One: evening broadcasts […]
Under sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, dollars are hard to come by in Iran. The rial fell from 20,160 against the greenback on the street market in August to 36,500 rials to the dollar in October. It’s settled, for now, around 27,000. The central bank’s fixed official rate is 12,260. Yet there’s […]
looking beyond borders 