AsGilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Hamas more than five years ago, was finally released in a vast prisoner exchange, it made me think about the relentless pursuit of his release by Israel. Such a pursuit by one’s family is both natural and understandable. Yet, not only was his […]
Source/Credit: The Huffington Post : By Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi | October 26, 2011 I was in Kasur, a small town near Lahore, Pakistan, where the celebrated mystic poet Bulleh Shah is buried. Thousands gathered for the 254th anniversary of his death. Slogans chanted on that occasion would be branded ‘blasphemous’ by […]
Source/Credit: Religion Dispatches By Haroon Moghul After Libya’s interim leader Abdul-Jalil’s Sunday speech, many have raised concerns about the place of Shari’ah law in Libya. Of course, you could take Juan Cole’s angle on this, and ask why we weren’t as concerned about the Islamic nature of the “new” Iraq […]
Source: Spiegel International The new rail route being built between Berlin and Munich is nothing if not ambitious — as well as being the most expensive transportation project to take shape since reunification. But the line is yet another example of how France beats Germany in the high-speed rail game and critics […]
Cathedral may be set to reopen, but the bitterness over the Church’s attitude to protesters has deepened St Paul’s Cathedral looks set to reopen tomorrow as The Church of England appeared to be in the grip of a crisis of conscience surrounding its stance on London’s anti-capitalist protest. Those camping […]
October 26, 2011 Crony Capitalism Comes Home By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system when they’re not doing drugs or having sex in public. The answer is […]
October 25, 2011 Limits of Magical Thinking By MAUREEN DOWD Steve Jobs, the mad perfectionist, even perfected his stare. He wanted it to be hypnotic. He wanted the other person to blink first. He wanted it to be, like Dracula’s saturnine gaze, a force that could bend your will to […]
Source / Courtesy: Bloomberg From his 33rd-floor penthouse apartment with sweeping views of the Nile River, Naguib Sawiris, Egypt’s best-known billionaire and most prominent Christian, can hear the chants of Friday prayers in the distance. As he sits down to a breakfast of taameya and ful, dishes made from fava beans, demonstrators are gathering […]
BRUSSELS — European leaders, in a significant step toward resolving the euro zone financial crisis, early Thursday morning obtained an agreement from banks to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their Greek debt. The agreement on Greek debt was crucial to assembling a comprehensive package to […]
A number of matchmaking events involving Buddhist monks, who are permitted to marry and have families in Japan, have taken place in the capital. Read more