Foreign Policy Public Health Blog

'The Blacklist' Has a Lot to Learn About China's One-Child Policy

Chinese Internet users have a message for the screenwriters of The Blacklist : You've got a lot to learn about our country. The third episode of The Blacklist, a new NBC television drama in which the FBI and a former fugitive team up to fight terrorism...

Published Tue, Oct 15 2013 9:00 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: East Asia, China, Fun Stuff

Glenn Greenwald Leaves Guardian to Start News Site

Glenn Greenwald -- the prominent journalist and columnist -- is leaving the Guardian to form an independent news site, and there's a wonderful irony to the news that he will be striking out on his own. "Because this news leaked before we were...

Published Tue, Oct 15 2013 4:00 PM by FP Passport

Morning Brief: Snowden Says China, Russia Could Not Have Accessed His Secret Files

Snowden Says China, Russia Could Not Have Accessed His Secret Files Top News: Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden claims he did not bring any classified information about the NSA with him when he traveled to Russia and that he was able to safeguard the...

Published Fri, Oct 18 2013 4:43 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief

How One Syrian Radio Station Took on Al Qaeda

CAIRO - In a supposedly "liberated" area of Syria, a group of opposition journalists is still being forced to operate in secret. They learned to sneak into their offices in the northern city of Raqqa after midnight, and conceal their activities...

Published Mon, Oct 21 2013 12:02 PM by FP Passport

Is China Saying Goodbye to 'Hello'?

Interest in learning Chinese may be growing in the United States, but English-language studies in China could very well be on the wane. On Oct. 21, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, the organization that decides what students in the city study...

Published Tue, Oct 22 2013 10:00 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: East Asia, China, Decline Watch

Argentina busts beauty queen drug smuggling ring

This, apparently, actually exists: Colombian model accused of leading a drug-trafficking gang that persuaded pretty young women to smuggle cocaine to Mexico was arrested Wednesday after evading Argentine police for five months. Angie Sanclemente Valencia...

Published Thu, May 27 2010 9:33 AM by FP Passport

Can Assad woo the West?

Pretend that you're the president of Syria, and Charlie Rose asks you to ruminate on your biggest challenge. What comes to mind? Acceptable answers include: the ever-present threat of war with Israel, which continues to occupy the Golan Heights; dismal...

Published Fri, May 28 2010 7:35 AM by FP Passport

U.S. sent envoy to Sudanese president's inauguration

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley today defended the administration's decision to send a consulate officer as a representatvie to the inauguration of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, currently under indictment for war crimes: Crowley acknowledged...

Published Fri, May 28 2010 2:15 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Human Rights, Sudan

A Greek-Israeli alliance? Maybe not.

In addition to the upwards of 10 deaths as a result of Monday's botched raid on a Turkish ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance of an Israeli blockade, Jerusalem appears to have suffered another casualty: its nascent security alliance...

Published Mon, May 31 2010 12:49 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Israel/Palestine

How Chinese hackers help Steve Jobs

The trans-Pacific row that recently led to Google shutting down its mainland China-based search engine (redirecting users to a Hong Kong site) began in January when the tech company announced that hackers based in China had breached its secure networks...

Published Tue, Jun 01 2010 8:56 AM by FP Passport

Is Sirleaf still a star?

The last time I saw Monrovia in 2005, there wasn't much of a city to describe. Buildings were riddled with bullets, roads had so many potholes it was hard to tell at which elevation they were actually supposed to be. Markets were built next to trash...

Published Tue, Jun 01 2010 1:59 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Africa

The return of famine?

What would happen if the primary source of calories for a third of sub-Saharan Africa's population suddenly disappeared? That's the question raised by recent reports, including on in the New York Times yesterday, that the crop is threated by a...

Published Tue, Jun 01 2010 4:32 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Food/Agriculture

Should artists' bad politics be held against them?

In the much-discussed cover story of this weekend's New York Times Magazine , Lynn Hirschberg profiles M.I.A., née Maya Arulpragasam, the British-by-way-of-Sri-Lanka musician whose third album comes out later this summer. It's an interesting piece...

Published Wed, Jun 02 2010 10:38 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Terrorism, Europe, Britain, Human Rights, Culture, Politics, South Asia, North Africa

Mission accomplished?

The Obama administration has bent over backwards this week to protect Israel from the worst blowback from Monday's deadly commando raid on the Miva Marmara , the Turkish ship that tried and failed to break the Gaza blockade. U.S. officials successfully...

Published Wed, Jun 02 2010 9:01 PM by FP Passport

Pacific islands are actually growing

When the Maldives staged an underwater cabinet meeting last year to highlight the country's vulnerability to sea-level rise, climate change activists looked on with a mixture of hope that the stunt would spur others to action and fear that an entire...

Published Thu, Jun 03 2010 8:31 AM by FP Passport