Day: June 1, 2011

Will Russia Stand Up to Syrian Challenge?

According to several media outlets, on May 24 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a telephone conversation with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad pointed out to him the need to engage in a dialogue with the circles as wide as possible. As pointed out by sources in the Arab countries, including […]

Lagarde visits Brazil in campaign for IMF job

France’s finance minister Christine Lagarde held talks in with her Brazilian counterpart on Monday in a bid to enlist support for her candidacy for the post of next chief of the International Monetary Fund. Christine Lagarde told Guido Mantega and Brazil’s central bank chief Alexandre Tombini that the main priority […]

Sarkozy kept close tabs on Strauss-Kahn, says French daily

French daily Le Monde has reported that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s beefed-up domestic intelligence team helped him strategically leak incriminating information about Dominique Strauss-Kahn when the Socialist starting rising in the polls. The newspaper reported on Wednesday that thanks to a newly reinforced internal intelligence agency, the Sarkozy administration is privy […]

Mainland Suspends Imports of Food from Taiwan

The Chinese mainland announced on Wednesday that as of June 1, it will suspend imports of beverages, food products and food additives from Taiwan that are produced by companies suspected of using a cancer-causing plastic additive. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (GAQSIQ) said the mainland has […]

Keep 4 Jamaat [-e-Islami] leaders detained till July 12: Tribunal

The International Crimes Tribunal on Wednesday directed the authorities concerned to keep four top Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, including its Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami, detained until July 12 in connection with crimes against humanity in 1971. The three other leaders are: Secretary General Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mojahid and assistant secretaries general Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Molla. The three-member […]

Indonesia’s Democracy

Readers of last Friday’s edition of The Australian may have been struck by the juxtaposition between an opinion piece by Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, in which he described Indonesia’s democracy as going ‘from strength to strength’, and the headline on the very next page: ‘SBY urged to back UN on […]

Non Means Non by Maureen Dowd (The NY Times – OP:ED)

In Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” an American writer clambers into a yellow vintage Peugeot every night and is transported back to hobnob with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso, Dali, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gertrude Stein in the shimmering movable feast. The star-struck aspiring novelist from Pasadena, played by Owen Wilson, […]

S.E.C. Case Stands Out Because It Stands Alone

At the height of the housing boom, the 26th floor of Goldman Sachs’s former headquarters on Broad Street in Lower Manhattan was the nerve center of Goldman’s fast-growing mortgage trading business. Hundreds of employees worked closely in teams, devising mortgage-based securities — billions of dollars’ worth — that were examined […]

Giant Ears on the British Coast

The enormous concrete shells are as tall as a house, and they were designed to listen for enemy aircraft in the 1920s and 30s. Pre-World War II acoustic experiments led to some extraordinary architecture — and to a remarkably effective technology which ultimately succumbed to the invention of radar. In […]