U.S. Web users are searching for information about North Korea with astounding, unprecedented frequency. Google searches for “North Korea,” currently seven times the previous peak during the country’s 2006 nuclear test, are dramatically outpacing those for Beyonce or even President Obama. Last week, North Korea was the third most-popular term on Twitter, following only Easter and Good Friday. […]
Soon after protests erupted outside the U.S. embassy in the Egyptian capital last September, inspired by the posting on the Internet of an American-made anti-Islamic video, the embassy posted a statement saying, “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.” The […]
One thing that everyone can agree on in Brussels is that Cyprus is a minnow in the European fish pond, accounting for less than 0.5 per cent of the euro zone economy. In the words of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, the island is “not systemically important”. Read Here – The National
When a friend behaves badly, it’s easy to take a time out. Stop taking their phones calls, pretend to be out when they come to apologise. But responsible nations don’t have the luxury of ignoring each other. That is why diplomacy can be a messy business, as India and Italy are learning this week. Read Here […]
It wasn’t Barack Obama’s doing — at least not fully. The crowds in Paris and Berlin, and the Muslims in Cairo and Karachi, eager to be done with President George W. Bush, took the new standard-bearer of American power as one of their own, a cosmopolitan man keen to break with the embattled certitude of […]
It’s immediately apparent that he is in poor health. He is overweight, his face is puffy and, as he says, he has spent the last one-and-a-half years “almost entirely in the hospital.” He has had four operations in five years and suffers from severe diabetes. He was even erroneously reported dead on Twitter last May. […]
As Kuwait gears up to celebrate its National and Liberation days today and tomorrow respectively, a festering political crisis casts its shadow over the festive atmosphere. Faced with a popular opposition movement demanding democratic reform and an end to corruption, the Kuwaiti government has responded with repressive measures that threaten to undermine the relative openness […]
Do British people feel proud of the Empire? Are they indifferent to it? Or have they been persuaded by the teaching of history, so influenced by the Left, that the British Empire was purely oppressive, racist and bad? These questions arise from David Cameron’s visit this week to India. He arrived, begging bowl in hand, […]
This hardly seems like the moment to ask what type of state will emerge in Libya. Two years on from the uprising that eventually toppled Muammar Qaddafi, the country hardly has a functioning state at all. There is still no constitution and there may not be one for months. The parliament, elected less than a […]
China and India announced they will resume joint military exercises at the conclusion of the Annual Defense Dialogue on January 14. It suggested a sign of growing engagement. The People’s Daily applauded India’s decision to go ahead with the exercises in the face of pressure from the US and Japan. “The future generations are assured […]
looking beyond borders 