Foreign Policy Public Health Blog

Brazilian prison gang holds 10-hour conference call

And you thought your company's meetings were too long. Jack Davis of InsightCrime writes : A Federal Police recording recently heard by Folha de Sao Paulo involves a 10-hour discussion between five members of the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital Read...

Published Wed, Dec 05 2012 10:59 AM by FP Passport

Morning Brief: North Korea launches long-range rocket

North Korea launches long-range rocket Top news: On Wednesday, North Korea and its new leader Kim Jong Un followed up on a failed rocket launch in April with the successful launch of a long-range Unha-3 rocket. Japan, South Korea, and the United States...

Published Wed, Dec 12 2012 5:08 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief

Arafat's ghost

Yasir Arafat had a canny knack for ensuring that Palestine never strayed too far from the world's headlines. His ghost may turn out to be no less resourceful. Today, a multinational team of medical and forensic experts exhumed the late Palestinian...

Published Tue, Nov 27 2012 8:35 AM by The Middle East Channel

Filed under: Middle East, Israel/Palestine, Arab World

2012 on Google: A year of storms, dead celebrities, and Brazilian reality shows

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Google's 2012 Zeitgeist Report is out today, and it makes for predictably fascinating reading. The report tracks the top search terms from Google users around the world. These...

Published Wed, Dec 12 2012 8:59 AM by FP Passport

A Dutch gameshow for failed asylum seekers

At first this seems suspiciously similar to parodies devised by Saturday Night Live and The Onion : A Dutch gameshow is giving failed asylum seekers the chance to win 4,000 euros (£3,525) to help them start a new life back in their country of origin....

Published Thu, Sep 01 2011 9:48 AM by FP Passport

Syrian Internet goes dark

At 12:26 pm today in Syria, 92 percent of the country's networks went offline - shutting the country off almost completely from the Internet. (Update: 100 percent of Syrian networks are now offline .) The Internet blackout comes at a time when Syria's...

Published Thu, Nov 29 2012 7:54 AM by The Middle East Channel

Filed under: Middle East Editors Blog

A tale of two cities

MANAMA — "I am not a prince of Sunni Bahrain; I am not a prince of Shia Bahrain. I am a prince of the Kingdom of Bahrain." So said Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to an assembled crowd at the Ritz-Carlton. Two large screens...

Published Mon, Dec 10 2012 8:56 AM by FP Passport

Georgetown basketball game ends in brawl in China

Something very ugly seems to have gone down during an exhibition basketball game between the Georgetown Hoyas and the Chinese professional team Baiyi. The Washington Post 's Dan Steinberg has more photos up on his blog. Here's an account from...

Published Thu, Aug 18 2011 8:02 AM by FP Passport

The story of an assassination

Lebanese politics, for the past six years, has in large part revolved around competing stories. In the wake of the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the country's political factions have struggled to provide a more...

Published Wed, Aug 17 2011 9:22 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Flash Points

South Sudan offers peacekeepers

Though still dealing with unresolved border disputes and internal rebelions, the newly indpendent government of South Sudan has offered to help the peace in another country in its region: South Sudan has offered to send African Union troops to Somalia...

Published Tue, Aug 16 2011 11:41 AM by FP Passport

CIA told Kennedy in 1960 that Cuba invasion plan was "unachievable"

This week, in response to a FOIA request from the National Security Archives project at George Washington University, the CIA released most of its top-secret internal history of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The 1200 page history was written between...

Published Tue, Aug 16 2011 1:53 PM by FP Passport

Tunisians frustrated but engaged

Just over a year since Tunisia's October 23, 2011 Constituent Assembly elections, long lines of patient citizens who emerged beaming from polls last October have given way to new demonstrations and general strikes -- this time against the Ennahda...

Published Tue, Dec 11 2012 10:50 AM by The Middle East Channel

Filed under: Middle East, North Africa, Middle East Top Story

How close has the world gotten to a $1 trillion coin?

One of the more amusing sideshows of the debt-ceiling negotiations is the so-called " platinum coin option ." Under this scenario, the president could sidestep congress by exploiting a legal loophole that allows the treasury to print platinum...

Published Tue, Jan 08 2013 11:37 AM by FP Passport

Leader of British anti-immigrant group arrested after illegally entering U.S.

The English Defense League is a far-right extremist group devoted to keeping undesirable immigrants -- Muslims in particular -- out of Britain. But one of it's leaders, Stephen Lennon, found himself on the other side of the immigration divide when...

Published Tue, Jan 08 2013 10:38 AM by FP Passport

Morning Brief: France steps up Mali intervention

France steps up Mali intervention Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Top news: France on Tuesday ramped up its military operation in Mali, where militant Islamists have taken over the north of the country and are pushing south toward the capital...

Published Tue, Jan 15 2013 6:04 AM by FP Passport