World in crisis mode over Mali Islamist advance
By Coumba Sylla / AFP BAMAKO: World leaders scrambled to stop Mali's descent into chaos Wednesday, two weeks after a coup in Bamako touched off a sequence which saw Tuareg rebels…
Shias, Sunnis in post-US Iraq: separate, unequal
By Hamza Hendawi / AP BAGHDAD: Now that US forces are gone, Iraq's ruling Shias are moving quickly to keep the two Muslim sects separate — and unequal. Sunnis are…
Artist Emin unveils new BA ‘dove’ planes
By AFP Artist Tracey Emin unveiled Tuesday the first of nine British Airways planes specially painted to look like golden doves to mark the London 2012 Olympic Games. The exterior…
Deneuve, icon of French cinema, honored in NY
By Jocelyn Noveck / AP Of her more than 100 films, only seven have been in English. So Catherine Deneuve said she was surprised to win an American film award. But…
Bob’s Your Uncle
By David Blanks Foodism is here. I mean, when you can dial a hotline and have delivered to your home an Australian wagyu beef fillet, an entire salmon, a kilo of…
Spring has been around a while, says Spring Lessons
By Chitra Kalyani It is late March in Berlin, one of those rare days when the sun is making a generous appearance, and people are out enjoying its light and warmth.…
Erdogan the peacemaker?
By Sinan Ulgen ISTANBUL: Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken on a daunting challenge. After participating in the nuclear-security summit in South Korea at the end of March, he…
China’s struggle to slow
By Yu Yongding BEIJING: At the opening of the annual session of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), Premier Wen Jiabao announced that the government’s target for annual economic growth…
Foreign, local pressures boost Saudi rates
By Andrew Torchia / Reuters DUBAI: Saudi Arabia's market interest rates are climbing as the economy booms, but the rise is as much due to international pressures as strain on banks'…
BRICs and more tar
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: Talking shops or photo ops? Verdant oases of green shoots? Or overblown blooming nuisances? Downtrodden by history’s rapacious greed, the wooed nations are the benighted forlorn —…