By Jonathan Thatcher Indonesia, the world’s third biggest democracy, sparked an international outcry with last month’s mass executions of convicted drug traffickers, most of them foreigners. At home, however, President Joko Widodo’s refusal to cave in to foreign...
By Alistair Lyon Yemen’s green terraced mountains, exuberant architecture and proud heritage of music, poetry and Islamic learning, not to mention its inhabitants’ fondness for whiling away the afternoons chewing mildly narcotic leaves, mark it out from its Arab...
By Bernd Debusmann When President Barack Obama announced the opening of a new chapter in U.S. relations with Cuba last December, he said, “We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.” The phrase echoed Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity...
You might think Sri Lanka would be small change for Asia’s two powerhouses. But maneuvering by China and India underscores the strategic importance both attach to the island nation. Called Ceylon in English until 1972, Sri Lanka occupies a strategic location in the...
By Barry Moody The Islamist massacre of nearly 150 university students in Kenya last week will accentuate concerns about the capacity of this strategic Western ally to face a mounting threat from al Qaeda’s Somali allies. The killings, which occurred only three months...
By Jane Macartney China’s ruling Communist Party has just announced it will put on trial its most senior official to be arrested for corruption since the Party swept to power more than 65 years ago. It is a part of a campaign by Party chief and President Xi Jinping to...
By Alan Wheatley The dollar bestrides the globe. How are oil, copper and other commodities priced and traded? In dollars. Unsure what currency to take to a faraway country? Best take dollars. How does every nation measure the strength of its currency? By how much it...
By Harvey Morris The golden rule of Israeli politics has always been to avoid any public spat with the Americans. The theory was that the electorate would punish any politician who endangered the country’s relationship with its closest and most powerful ally. Benjamin...
By Elaine Monaghan It was dark one night when Boris Yeltsin was still president of Russia, a few tumultuous years after communist rule ended. I wrapped up the closing shift at the Reuters office and drove across the Moscow River in my red, box-shaped Lada Niva. It was...
By Girish Gupta When Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela in 1999, U.S. Ambassador to Caracas John Maisto said the U.S. government should watch what Chávez did, not listen to what he said. Chávez’s rhetoric was indeed fiery. Seven years after coming to power, he...