“Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks. And sell the Acropolis too!”— headline, Bild newspaper, March 4, 2010

Sometimes they cut to the essence of the story, those tabloid headline-writers, even when they haven’t got the quotation exactly right. Read on »

To say that Santiago, Chile, looks far better today than Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is of no comfort to the people of Chile. It will not rebuild their ruined houses, nor will it bring back their dead. It will not reconstruct the damaged airport or mobilize the field hospitals and emergency supplies needed to keep the death toll from rising further. Read on »

Let’s be serious for a moment. President Barack Obama will not bomb Iran. This is not because he is a liberal, or because he is a peacenik, or because he doesn’t have the guts to try and “save” his presidency in this time-honored manner, as Sarah Palin said she would like him to do. Read on »

I have seen America’s future, and it is Greece. Read on »

Every revolution sparks a counterrevolution. The French Revolution in 1789 was followed by Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy. Following the Russian Revolution, the czar’s forces regrouped and fought a bloody civil war. Sunday’s election of Viktor Yanukovych to the presidency of Ukraine does not represent the counterrevolution—or at least not yet. Read on »

ZURICH—We inch forward, and then we stop. Then we inch forward again. Then, for half a mile or so we speed up, and it seems we are actually going to start making real time. Then we stop. A few more inches forward , and then we stop again. Read on »

JAIPUR, India—The Amber Fort is the same, the pink buildings still glow in the early morning sun, the hawkers seem unchanged, and so do the elephants. But almost everything else is completely different. Read on »

For the past several days, I have found myself unable to look at the photographs from Haiti. I have also found that when I start reading an article datelined Port-au-Prince, I have to force myself to read to the end of it. Read on »

Somehow he conned the Jordanian secret service into thinking he was its agent. Then he conned the CIA into thinking he was its agent, too. After that, he conned both the Jordanians and the Americans—his “enemies,” he told Al Jazeera—into believing he could track down leaders of al-Qaida. Nevertheless, by far the most intriguing thing about Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi—the suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA base in Afghanistan two weeks ago—is his wife, Defne Bayrak. Read on »

All you frequent flyers out there know the drill. Take off your shoes, because of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. Remove the hair gel from your backpack, because of the would-be bombers who targeted Heathrow using liquid hydrogen peroxide. When you get on the plane, you must also, from now on, be prepared to remove blankets from your lap before landing—too bad if you’re asleep!—because of the Christmas Day underwear bomber. Read on »