Foreign Policy Public Health Blog

Morning Brief: NSA has direct access to tech company servers in broad intelligence program

NSA has direct access to tech company servers in broad intelligence program Top news: The National Security Agency has gained direct access to the servers of nine prominent tech companies, enabling the spy agency to gather e-mails, videos, and photographs...

Published Fri, Jun 07 2013 5:45 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief

PRISM continues U.S. government tradition of death by PowerPoint

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 With the revelation that the Obama administration has continued a Bush-era program at the National Security Agency to directly access the servers of nine leading tech companies...

Published Fri, Jun 07 2013 11:44 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: National Security

This is, hands down, the scariest part of the NSA revelations

Forget PRISM, the National Security Agency's system to help extract data from Google, Facebook, and the like. The more frightening secret program unearthed by the NSA leaks is the gathering and storing of millions of phone records and phone-location...

Published Mon, Jun 10 2013 4:20 AM by FP Passport

Sri Lanka opposition leader arrested

Things seem to be going from bad to worse in Sri Lanka, as president Mahinda Rajapaksa continues to crack down following his disputed election victory last month: General Fonseka, a retired four-star general who lost to President Mahinda Rajapakse in...

Published Mon, Feb 08 2010 10:05 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: South Asia

Will Tymoshenko concede?

With more than 99 percent of the vote counted, there seems to be little doubt left and that Viktor Yanukovych has defeated his one-time Orange Revolution foe Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine's presidential election. But, never one to avoid drama, Tymoshenko...

Published Mon, Feb 08 2010 3:48 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Eastern Europe, Elections

Dead or alive list updates

Some of the ambiguity has been resolved for two of the names on our list of world leaders who may or may not be dead. One of them is now almost certainly dead. One is no longer a leader. Pakistani Taliban sources have n ow confirmed that their leader...

Published Tue, Feb 09 2010 10:12 AM by FP Passport

Vote in your pajamas in sunny Catalunya

For the past few months, a cynical observer might think, Washington has carried out a long piece of performance art detailing the many ways in which passing legislation is hard, even with the White House and Congress in one party's hands. There are...

Published Tue, Feb 09 2010 3:10 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Europe, Law, Environment, Elections

Haiti death toll matches Asian Tsunami

With the Haitian government raising the death toll from last month's earthquake to 230,000, the count now matches the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Considering that the tsunami damage was spread out over eight countries as opposed to one country the...

Published Wed, Feb 10 2010 6:32 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Haiti's Disaster

Would better bonuses make better bankers?

Barack Obama is catching some heat for saying that he doesn't "begrudge" the bonuses paid to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon ($9 and $17 million, respectively). I don't see what the fuss is all...

Published Wed, Feb 10 2010 8:33 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Finance

Oh, Canada!

The Gaggle blog over on our sister site Newsweek notes that Canada's parliament has shut down for two months (?!) for the winter Olympic games. For those of you who have gotten behind on your Canadian politics, here’s a basic rundown . Prime Minster...

Published Wed, Feb 10 2010 1:30 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: North America, Sports, Olympics, Canada

Profile in courage

Over at Enduring America , a good source for Iran protest news, Scott Lucas flags this photo of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a key swing player in Iranian politics, hanging out at a pro-regime rally: Read More...

Published Thu, Feb 11 2010 7:11 AM by FP Passport

Global warming advocates don't care enough about global warming

Back in my days as an editor at Washington Monthly , we were taught to report on something colleagues called the "culture of bureacracy." This may sound like a snoozer topic, but the point is that you can learn a lot about how an institution...

Published Thu, Feb 11 2010 10:48 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Environment

China's plane diplomacy

We've heard of ping-pong diplomacy and panda diplomacy ... and now there's plane diplomacy. Actually, the fact that state-run Chinese airlines make politically motivated decisions about whether to give contracts to Boeing or Airbus -- or to split...

Published Thu, Feb 11 2010 3:22 PM by FP Passport

Chilean coins misspell Chile

A batch of 50-peso coins, each worth about a dime, have returned to cause a headache for the Chilean mint. The coins spell the country's name C-H-I-I-E -- a typo that has recently cost the the general manager of the mint his job. The most remarkable...

Published Fri, Feb 12 2010 7:45 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Fun Stuff, South America, Economics

The Akbar Zeb story: too good to be true

I wrote last week about Pakistan's High Commissioner to Canada Akbar Zeb's reported rejection as ambassador to Saudi Arabia due to the unfortunate Arabic translation of his name as "biggest ***." Alas, the story turns out to be false...

Published Fri, Feb 12 2010 11:23 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Diplomacy, Media, Fun Stuff, South Asia