Merkel looks to Hesse before Germany votes
BERLIN – German conservatives led by Chancellor Angela Merkel are getting an unexpected chance to retake the state of Hesse – one of the biggest of the 16 German states, and home to Frankfurt, center of the country's banking – months before the 2009 national election.
Perfecting the union
NEW YORK – Beyond Iraq, beyond the economy, beyond health care, there was something even more fundamental to stake in this US election won by Barack Obama: the self-respect of the American people.
Egypt: Our guided debate
It's better to cover men's eyes than women's bodies. Today's conception of honor is based on a lie. Read the column in Arabic below: عنى الشرف هذه الأيام يتحول الى معتقدات خاطئة
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Habitants and Cuba
Duration of the Declaration of 60, and the siglo pasado, they produce a tree of nacimientos and Cuba, for the moment of confession and the recent revolution.
EU says it will talk to Russia
BRUSSELS – The European Union took a significant step Monday toward normalizing ties with Moscow strained by Russia's military campaign in Georgia, announcing that it would resume a set of negotiations put on ice after the August war.
The EU considers the possibility of a small-country bailout
BRUSSELS – Could Europe's biggest economies be called upon to bail out the smaller, weaker ones?
Tibet: Obama's lacking struggle
Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama did not pronounce the word «human rights» correctly in Beijing. But I'm not disappointed. That's exactly what I expected.
Shifting to multilateralism
WASHINGTON – Though President-elect Barack Obama has yet to clarify his Iraq strategy, we can be sure of one thing: He will want Europe to do more.
Emerging nations are seen as economic lifesavers
BARCELONA – The United States may have plunged the world into a sharp economic downturn, but it will take the combined efforts of China and other emerging nations to lead the global economy out of what is likely to be a long and painful recession.
Google and Europe at odds over privacy
BERLIN – When Google began hiring in Zurich for its new engineering center in 2004, local officials welcomed the US company with open arms. Google's arrival is still bearing fruit for Zurich: 450 employees, about 300 of them engineers, work in Google's seven-story complex in a converted brewery on the outskirts of the placid mountain metropolis.
Climate expert urges EU to take action
BRUSSELS – The European Union should agree on a strong package of measures to tackle greenhouse gas emissions even if that means making special concessions to satisfy reluctant countries like Poland, according to Nicholas Stern, one of the world's foremost authorities on climate change.
As days dwindle, both campaigns claim an edge among voters
WASHINGTON – Top advisers to the major presidential candidates both predicted enormous voter turnout for the election Tuesday and, unsurprisingly, victory for their bosses. But Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, did so in more confident terms and with convincing support from opinion polls, saying, "We think we have a decisive edge right now."
With budget to stake, Obama is ready to fight
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration began a vigorous new offensive this weekend to sell its economic program, countering Republicans who call the new budget plan "mind-boggling" in its numbers and ambition.
The EU Ticks A Box
The European Union is holding a seminar on media freedom in Uzbekistan at the beginning of this month. Seems logical enough. Journalists who cross the authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan have been murdered, others have been tortured and still others are being framed by the police right now. A two-day EU seminar was just what was needed to sort that all out.
EU tries to stay neutral as Russia reduces gas flow to Ukraine
PARIS – As Russia puts the latest tightening twist on the gas valve to Ukraine on Monday, Europe steadfastly refused to become the arbitrator in a price dispute in which both sides have weaker hands than in a similar standoff three years ago.
France aims to take its full place in NATO
MUNICH – President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and top NATO officials will begin a diplomatic effort this month to persuade lawmakers in Paris to accept Sarkozy's plans to return France to full membership in NATO military command structures in time for the alliance's summit meeting in April.
With Obama ready to talk, Iran must weigh options
DAVOS, Switzerland – President Barack Obama's willingness to talk to Iran seems to have put the Iranian leadership in an uncomfortable spot.
Crisis reaches Europe as institutions in four countries
FRANKFURT – The turmoil that has rocked the U.S. banking system spread to Europe on Monday, buffeting institutions in at least four countries with a chain of new failures. Another US bank was also consumed in a fire sale just when hopes were high that the worst was over.
Putin's methods
In our country the fight against terrorism is called a "special operation". Most often these "operations" take place in Khasavyourt, a city in Chechnya's neighboring Republic of Dagestan.
Amid crisis, EU leaders feud over small change
BRUSSELS – If European officials were accused of lacking ambition last November, when they first suggested spending € 5 billion to kickstart the world's largest trading bloc, their impasse four months later over the plan has become a symbol of a weak and divided response to the global financial crisis.
Russia takes a softer tone on missile deployment
BERLIN – Russia seems to be testing the ground for a shift in policy, which could emerge at the annual Munich gathering on security policy that two years ago was the forum used by then-President Vladimir Putin to take a much harsher tone with the West and announce Moscow's hard-nosed return as a force in international affairs.
Leak about Afghan tactics forces NATO to backtrack
BERLIN – NATO was reeling Friday after the leak of a classified document in which the military alliance's supreme commander of Europe proposed that NATO soldiers serving in Afghanistan shoot drug traffickers without waiting for proof.
Cuba: How Castro fooled us
Read the column in Spanish below: "Capitalism in the media. La sociedad cubana vive sustentada and the exploration of hombre por el Estado."
EU powers favor changes to global financial system
BRUSSELS – Shaken by the financial meltdown and plunging markets, leaders of the world's economic powers said Wednesday that they favored an ambitious campaign to revamp the structures that have governed global finance for more than 60 years.
Echoes of The Cold War in Russia's new stance
BERLIN – The Poles have had their ups and downs with the Bush administration. But one thing Warsaw succeeded in obtaining was an agreement to base parts of the Pentagon's controversial antiballistic missile system in Poland.