Chinese entities world’s biggest economic spies: Pentagon
Saturday, 19 May 2012
The Pentagon said on Friday it believes China spent up to $180 billion on its military buildup last year, a far higher figure than acknowledged by Beijing, and it accused “Chinese actors” of being the world’s biggest perpetrators of economic espionage. China rejected the report as irresponsible, saying the United States was ... Read More
A green light for more violence? Iraq gives its citizens right to own guns
Saturday, 19 May 2012
The Iraqi government has decided to allow civilians the right to own guns and rifles, sparking uproar in the country, with some people saying that the decision will unleash more violence, while others welcome it. On May 6, the Iraqi government’s spokesman Ali Al-Dabagh announced in a statement that the government has ... Read More
Jordanian and Israeli farmers use barn owls to control pests
Friday, 18 May 2012
Seven barn owl chicks nestled together in a wooden box in Israel's Beit Shean valley are not fuzzy and cute exotic pets, but they have become functional as they are the success of a decade-long project to use their species as biological pesticides. In 2002, Jordanian and Israeli farmers wanted to end the use of poisons ... Read More
Tunisian revolution victims sew lips in bloody protest
Friday, 18 May 2012
A group of victims of Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolt sewed their lips shut to express their anger and frustration on Thursday to highlight their plight. They call themselves ‘The Injured of the Tunisian Revolution’, and have been protesting for more than one year about the lack of health care. In protest, they set camp ... Read More
Bardo Museum reopens in Tunis after facelift
Friday, 18 May 2012
The Bardo museum in Tunisia’s capital, renowned for its exceptional collection of ancient mosaics, on Friday opened a new wing after a 10 million euro ($12.7 million) facelift. Unique in the scope of its treasures, the museum, which doubled its surface area, boasts objects from prehistory, the Phoenician period ... Read More
9/11 families upset over ground zero museum delays
Friday, 18 May 2012
They were promised a place to mourn their loved ones, display their photographs and educate people about exactly what was lost on 9/11. But today, family members of those killed have no completion date for the museum that is to be built alongside the Sept. 11 memorial at ground zero - and many are upset. “The ... Read More
Palestinians see settlements thwarting state
Friday, 18 May 2012
Surrounded by aides, including one whose only task seems to be to light his cigarettes, Mahmoud Abbas sits in a vast presidential office and speaks of his ambition to create a Palestinian state. But outside his sprawling compound on the hills of the West Bank town of Ramallah reality on the ground is different - his dream is ... Read More
With state weak, Libyans look to God for help
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Mohamed Salem believes it was divine intervention that saved the Muslim holy site where he works from being destroyed. In early March, word reached the keepers of the ornate shrine, the most important of its kind in Libya, that ultra-conservative Salafis were on their way to destroy it as part of a campaign to wipe out ... Read More
Is it curtains for Afghanistan’s fading silver screen?
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Clouds of hashish and cigarette smoke float across a screen showing a dancing Pakistani woman, who evokes yowls of excitement from the hundreds of Afghan men passing their time in one of the capital’s rundown cinemas. Once a treasured luxury for the elite, Afghan film connoisseurs are deeply distressed by the dilapidated ... Read More
Battle in Iraq pits oil against antiquities
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Babylon’s Hanging Gardens were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but heritage appears to be no match for Iraq’s booming oil industry in a dispute over a new pipeline. As Baghdad is working to get UNESCO to list Babylon as a World Heritage Site, archaeologists and oil ministry officials are in a ... Read More
Brotherhood faces new challenges in Egypt power quest
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
On the eve of the uprising that swept Hosni Mubarak from power, the Muslim Brotherhood braced itself for a wave of mass detentions, convinced the president was planning to hand power to his son and would order a crackdown on opposition. In is a testament to how much has changed since then, the head of its political party, ... Read More
In Yemen, eating is a luxury millions struggle to afford
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
For almost half of Yemen’s 22 million people, eating has become a luxury they can’t always afford. On a bad day, Umm Ahmad and her family of five, who live in the capital’s shanty-town district of Al-Sunaina, go without any food at all. On a better day, Umm Ahmad’s husband, who works as a ... Read More
Afghan woman pushes for rights from behind the wheel
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
The morning after the Taliban fell Shakila Naderi shed her head-to-toe burqa, sat behind the wheel of a car for the first time and asked her husband to teach her how to drive. Now Kabul’s only female driving instructor, she teaches women a rare skill that confronts harsh opposition in ultra-conservative, Muslim ... Read More
Copts to shun Islamists in Egypt’s presidential, vote fear sectarian conflicts
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Egypt’s Coptic Christians complained of discrimination under Hosni Mubarak but fear it may get worse if an Islamist takes his place in next week’s presidential election. Long-suppressed Islamists already dominate parliament. Islamist contenders for the presidency say Christians, who form about a tenth of Egypt’s 82 million ... Read More
Iraq “torture prison” is still open: rights group
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday that Iraqi authorities were still running a jail they said had been shut over a year ago after reports of prisoners being beaten and electrocuted, but the government denied this, saying the site was empty. The New York-based watchdog and other critics of the administration of Prime Minister ... Read More
Rights groups slam new calls for female circumcision in southern Egypt
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
A group of Egyptian medical and human rights organizations on Monday condemned reports on the mobile medical convoy for circumcision of girls in the southern Egyptian governorate of Minya, organized by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), an Egyptian news website reported on Tuesday. They expressed, in ... Read More
Algeria’s bars playing cat-and-mouse game with an increasingly Islamic state
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Algeria’s traditional bars are closing one after the other but illegal outlets are mushrooming, in a prohibition-style game of cat-and-mouse played out with an increasingly Islamic state. Islamist parties may have suffered a stinging electoral setback last week but Algeria’s Islamization has been driven chiefly ... Read More
Tomb opened for clues to missing Vatican schoolgirl
Monday, 14 May 2012
Investigators attempting to resolve one of Italy’s most enduring mysteries on Monday opened the tomb of a mobster in a Rome basilica for clues to the disappearance of a Vatican schoolgirl nearly 30 years ago. Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis, the feared head of Rome’s Magliana gang which terrorized the capital in the 1980s, has ... Read More
Refugees mark 64 years of ‘Nakba,’ still hopeful of returning home
Monday, 14 May 2012
Palestinians prepare to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, which means the catastrophe in Arabic, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their lands and homes in 1948 when the state of Israel was established. An estimated 10,000 Palestinian refugees remain living in the Aqabit ... Read More
Anti-Islam course in U.S. military part of ‘wider problem’: activists
Monday, 14 May 2012
A course at a U.S. military academy teaching soldiers they are at war with the world’s Muslims is not the only anti-Islam rhetoric to spill out from government bodies, campaigners warned this week. Last month, the course at the Joint Forces Staff College which taught its students that America might ultimately have to ... Read More