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 […]

Driving Home a Point

Dr. Walid Ahmad Fitaihi ‘Gap is widening between application of religious regulations and realities of life’Islam is a practical religion that aims to regulate people’s life in the best possible manner. Since its laws are logical, Shariah has in its inner depths a mechanism to adapt to changing times and […]

Cakewalk to (Baghdad) Tehran

Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib Imagine there’s a Middle Eastern country with a history of rocky relations with the United States. Washington hawks insist the country poses a threat to both the United States and its allies. They undertake a PR campaign demonizing the country’s polity and make cocksure claims […]

Qadhafi: I will not leave my country.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Muammar Qadhafi is emphatic he will not leave Libya, South African President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday after talks with the Libyan leader that left prospects for a negotiated end to the conflict looking dim. But new questions emerged over how long Qadhafi could hold on after a senior […]

Solution known …

There is fear that if the Palestinians’ bid for recognition of a state of their own at the UN General Assembly next September is torpedoed or aborted, they may opt for another Intifada, of more ominous proportion. Having tried diplomatic means and peaceful resistance, if they find all doors firmly […]