The 11th Arab conference on combating terrorism was held this past week in the Tunisian capital of Tunis. The two-day event, convened by the Council of Arab Interior Ministers, brought together officials from the region's counter-terrorism establishments to address various issues stemming from terrorism. In addition to the council, representatives from the Arab League and […]
According to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, the Hamas-led government in Gaza threatened to take measures against anyone who violates the ceasefire. This came in response to a rocket attack launched by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades against the Israeli town of Sderot. Hamas claims that the Al-Aqsa Brigades, an armed wing of the group's political […]
The New York Times reported in an interesting article from Paris June 17 that Barack Obama's political success in the United States is helping to give hope, and a new sense of identity, to blacks in France. The report erred, however, by referring twice to incidents of vandalism and rioting in France with the clear, […]
Some supporters of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty are making wild, and so far unsubstantiated, allegations that American “neocons” were responsible for the treaty's defeat in the Irish referendum June 12. France's Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet went farthest, stating that “Europe has powerful enemies on the other side of the Atlantic, gifted with considerable financial […]
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson visited Norway last week looking for foreign investors, and the local media back home reported his trip as a success. According to the El Paso news station KVIA, Richardson had succeeded in convincing Norway's largest energy company StatoilHydro to come to New Mexico to explore investment opportunities, apparently in natural […]
European media outlets reported extensively when flooding of the Mississippi river caused major damage in the U.S. Midwest last week. Much of the European reporting linked the latest floods to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which received huge amounts of negative media coverage in Europe and was widely used to accuse the Bush administration of insensitivity […]
In response to an IDF operation that killed two in the West Bank town of Nablus early this morning, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militants claimed to have fired three rockets from the Gaza Strip at the Israeli town of Sderot. Israeli sources confirm that rockets did hit the town, lightly wounding two. One of those […]
Here's a YouTube link to Al-Jazeera's English coverage of the recent clashes in the Lebanese port city of Tripoli. Note that the fighting between the residents of the largely Alawite Baal Mohsen and the predominantly Sunni Beb al-Tabbaneh neighborhoods is reminiscent of the 1980's when, during the civil war, the same areas were respectively split […]
I wrote a post last week on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's then planned state visit to India. Now that his trip has concluded, I thought I would provide some highlights from Syria's state-run SANA News Agency's in-depth coverage. As previously mentioned, al-Assad sought to strengthen bilateral relations with India on both political and economic matters. […]
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency featured a report today on its English language website that provides an overview of how both Palestinian and Israeli newspapers have been responding to the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which took effect in Gaza on Thursday morning. People on both sides have voiced some skepticism as to whether […]
The motorcade of the US State Department's Charges d’Affaires in Lebanon Michele Sison was pelted with stones on Wednesday by townspeople in the south Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh. Sison was visiting USAID and US-sponsored projects in the area, but reportedly had to make an unexpected lunch stop in Nabatiyeh after one of the cars in […]
Al-Jazeera's English website featured a report over the weekend that suggests political divisions within the Palestinian cause are exacerbating a deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip. The report comes on the first anniversary of Hamas's takeover of Gaza, and claims that many within the Palestinian press have voiced their frustration with the current situation. A […]
On June 11, Tom Baldwin and Gerard Baker of The Times of London reported on an exclusive interview ("President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war') with President George Bush at a U.S.-EU summit meeting in Slovenia, in which Bush expressed regret about what The Times called his "gun-slinging rhetoric" in the build-up […]
Syria's state-run SANA news agency has dedicated a new section of its website to President Bashar al-Assad's planned visit to India this coming week. The site's English language section has also featured coverage of the visit. So far, the articles featured in this section have included commentary discussing the overall agenda and goals of al-Assad's […]
Here's an interesting report that was recently featured on Al-Jazeera's English language website. It provides some insight into the rise of the al-Shabaab, also often referred to as the Mujahideen Youth Movement (MYM), as an armed force in Somalia. Some interesting points/quotes put forth by the author: 1) Entities within the al-Shabaab initially began as […]