Foreign Policy Public Health Blog

Iran Watch: The bratwurst effect

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is making headlines for declaring over the weekend that Tehran does not fear Western military action. "You say to Iran all options are on the table," he noted. "Leave them there until they rot."...

Published Mon, Mar 12 2012 2:22 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Iran, Iran Watch

Passport on the Daily Show

Michael Wilkerson's guest post from last week made a cameo appearance in Jon Stewart's segment on the Kony 2012 campaign last night. Watch for it around 3:05: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor...

Published Tue, Mar 13 2012 6:29 AM by FP Passport

Morning Brief: U.S. defense secretary visits a tense Afghanistan

U.S. defense secretary visits a tense Afghanistan Top story: U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta began an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Wednesday, only days after an American soldier killed 16 Afghan civilians. Ahead of the trip, which officials...

Published Wed, Mar 14 2012 4:57 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief

Reading Assad's emails

The Guardian appears to have come across a major scoop: a cache of 3,000 emails written by Syrian regime insiders, including President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma. The e-mails were reportedly leaked to a Syrian opposition group by "a mole in...

Published Wed, Mar 14 2012 12:47 PM by FP Passport

Why Serbia is still bullish on the EU

Responding to the news of recent acceptance of Serbia as a membership candidate for the EU, Alan Sked has a new piece today asking why any country would still want to join the union. I recently discussed this question with Serbia's ambassador to the...

Published Thu, Mar 15 2012 8:01 AM by FP Passport

HIV and malaria return to Greece

Earlier this month, Greek journalist Nick Malkoutzis wrote a piece asking the question, " Is Greece a Failed State? " The title was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but at the Guardian reports, Medecins Sans Frontieres, more accustomed to working in...

Published Thu, Mar 15 2012 2:51 PM by FP Passport

Take a cruise on Hannibal Qaddafi's supervillain yacht

The yacht that Muammar al-Qaddafi's ne'er do well (even by the standards of the Qaddafi family) son was having built for himself was everything you would expect it to be : Replete with marble columns, gold-framed mirrors and huge statues, the...

Published Fri, Mar 16 2012 8:50 AM by FP Passport

Afghanistan shooter quoted in 2009 Army article from Iraq?

The Army has just released the name of the suspect in last weekend's shooting rampage in Afghanistan: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales: His lawyer, John Henry Browne, said on Thursday that the suspect was a 38-year-old man who had been injured twice while...

Published Fri, Mar 16 2012 3:49 PM by FP Passport

Ted Koppel's guide to the media

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Ted Koppel, the 25 year veteran anchor of Nightline and former Managing Editor of Discovery Channel, used to appear on John Stewart's The Daily Show as the standard of journalistic...

Published Mon, Mar 19 2012 12:06 PM by FP Passport

Asia's arms shopping spree

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute was come out with the latest update to its Arms Transfers Database, which shows Asian countries -- particularly India -- continuing to drive the global demand for small arms: India's military build...

Published Tue, Mar 20 2012 11:30 AM by FP Passport

France's Dixville Notch

The hamlet of Dixville Notch ( population: 9 ) is famous for being the first town to vote in New Hampshire's primary and predicting the eventual Republican nominee in every presidential election since 1968 (its record in the Democratic primary and...

Published Mon, Apr 16 2012 11:36 AM by FP Passport

Maldives, Malvinas, one of those.

The president appeared to be having some difficulty with his archipelagos in this clip from a press conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. At 20:30, he means to say "Malvinas," the Spanish name for the Falkland Islands, but...

Published Tue, Apr 17 2012 1:51 PM by FP Passport

What was really going on in that racist Swedish cake photo?

If you spent some time on the Internet yesterday, you've probably seen it already -- the photo of laughing Swedish culture minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth cutting into a cake designed as a racist caricature of an African woman. Or Jezebel succinctly...

Published Wed, Apr 18 2012 7:34 AM by FP Passport

Decline Watch: The U.S. is getting less popular (but not where Republicans think)

Gallup and the Meridian International Center released their annual U.S. global leadership Report today. (You can find the full version here and highlights here .) The big takeaway is that global approval of U.S. leadership in 2011 continued its slow slide...

Published Thu, Apr 19 2012 1:19 PM by FP Passport

India Swears Its Redundant, Mega-Priced Mars Probe Is Totally Worth It

India's space scientists must be tired, by now, of defending their cosmic ambitions. Though the nation has made a valiant effort to recast itself as a pioneer of space exploration in recent years, it can't seem to get around criticisms of how...

Published Mon, Nov 04 2013 9:10 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Science & Technology, China, South Asia, Development, Economics, India