The presumption of a Chinese bubble is not borne out
On the eve of Chinese New Year, the People’s Bank of China (PBC) surprised the market by announcing – for the second consecutive time in a month – an increase in banks’ mandatory-reserve ratio by 50...
View ArticleIsrael pulled off a brilliant blunder in Dubai
The Dubai operation looks like a brilliant bungle. Brilliant because it was swift, smooth and effective.
View ArticleIraq's neighbors all seem to have a piece of its future
As you tour the streets of Baghdad these days, your eyes can hardly avoid the tens of thousands of posters and banners of candidates for the parliamentary elections tomorrow.
View ArticleIraqi elections are critical, and the signs are not reassuring
Iraqis go to the polls tomorrow to elect a new Parliament for the second time under the country's permanent Constitution of 2006.
View ArticleMideastern war fears are never hollow
Across the Middle East, a fatalistic conventional wisdom is taking hold, namely that war is unavoidable.
View ArticleAfghan success will reveal if NATO can expand its global role
Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as other institutions have been struggling to redefine their roles in strengthening international security.
View ArticleYour dollars are safe, but you can get better returns elsewhere
Chinese officials and private investors around the world have been worrying aloud about whether their dollar investments are safe.
View ArticleIntegrate Germany's Muslims,but also defend liberal democracy
The relationship between the popular majority in Germany and the country's Muslim residents is one of the foremost topics of public discussion in the country today, one that often escalates into a...
View ArticleInnocent in Iraq, insists Gordon Brown
Some years ago, while idly browsing in a bookshop, I came across the autobiography of American actress Shirley MacLaine.
View ArticleIranian women rally against a law to permit polygamy
Iranian women's groups and other organizations are fighting a much-discussed proposed law which they say would encourage polygamy by allowing a man to take a second wife without the permission of the...
View ArticleFree Tilly the whale, as well as all captive animals
Last month, at the Sea World amusement park in Florida, a killer whale grabbed a trainer, Dawn Brancheau, pulled her underwater, and thrashed about with her.
View ArticleBack to bloody square-one in Darfur
In 2002, when Darfur was as familiar to most people as Outer Mongolia, Sudanese regular forces and aircraft as well as pro-government militias attacked Jebel Marra, the mountainous center of Darfur...
View ArticleThe untold story of women's rights in Egypt
In a report published last month on violent crimes committed against women in 2009, Karam Saber Ibrahim, executive director of the Land Center for Human Rights, a Cairo-based non-governmental...
View ArticlePoland and Russia once again succumb to the cruelty of chance
In Russia, somewhere behind every event lurks the question: Who is to blame? In the tragedy that claimed the lives of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other Polish leaders, we can answer that...
View ArticleThe volcano an Iran war would become
Iceland's volcano Eyjafjallajokull recently created air travel chaos across Europe. Millions were affected and financial losses mounted during a time of global recession.
View ArticleThe Fayyad plan may emerge as the only game in town
Speculation about the Obama administration's preparations to launch its own Israel-Arab peace plan began on April 7 with an op-ed article by David Ignatius in The Washington Post and a similar New York...
View ArticleJazz helps to bridge the American-Pakistani divide
Science fiction fans may remember how humans and aliens communicated with one another using a five-tone musical motif in the 1977 film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
View ArticleAlas, America's megabanks remain too big to fail
The world economy faces a major problem: the largest banks in the United States remain "too big to fail," meaning that if one or more of them were in serious trouble, they would be saved by government...
View ArticleDeradicalize terrorists by also doing it to their families
The so-called "war against terror" is a war of ideologies. It can only be won by changing extremists' beliefs in the use of violence, says an Indonesian expert in extremism.
View ArticleUse connectivity to make the uneducated obsolete
It is not every day that one gets to join two global powerhouses to promote a planetary breakthrough, but that is the reality with Connect to Learn, a new worldwide initiative to ensure that all...
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