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On a recent afternoon at Peet’s Coffee in Evanston, IL, Professor Kristen Stilt of Northwestern University’s School of Law and Department of History discussed the recent vote in Turkey that would change the constitution to allow women to wear head scarves on public university campuses. The complex issue has stirred passionate feelings about Turkey’s secularism, Islam […]

PHOTO: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, World Economic Forum, flickr. 
George W. Bush can’t be too happy about this. The prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, held talks with Iran in Tehran. The Al Jazeera article says he is “the most senior UAE official to make a bilateral […]

PHOTO: Supporters of Michel Aoun upon his return to Lebanon in 2005, FlickrJunkie, flickr.
Lebanon continues to postpone its presidential election. Lebanon has not had a president since November when Emile Lahoud left office. There is a precarious gridlock in Lebanon’s government caused by the anti-Syrian block and the Hezbollah-led opposition. The secretary-general of the Arab League has […]

PHOTO: Pakistan prime minister Pervez Musharraf at the World Economic Forum in 2006, user World Economic Forum’s photos, flickr. 
Pakistani lawyers were blasted with water cannons at a rally protesting the detention of Pakistan’s deposed chief justice. The late Benazir Bhutto’s husband led a rally attended by 100,000 supporters and urged them to “save” the country. A suspected suicide bomber […]

PHOTO: Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem. flickr user FabioHofnick. 
A suicide bomber blew himself up and killed a woman in the southern town of Dimona, where Israel’s secret nuclear reactor is housed. Some American news reports say he killed three people–that would include the bomber himself and another bomber who failed to detonate.
Israel suspects that the bomber accessed the […]

Cyd Mizell, a 49-year-old American, and her Afghan driver have been missing for several days after they were abducted in Kandahar province. Nobody has taken responsiblity for the kidnapping and the Taliban are questioning their own people to see if anyone from their end is involved. They have previously conducted abductions to make a political point.
Political motives […]

 PHOTO: Christiaan Briggs, flickr creative commons.
Ahmad is an Iraqi kid whose leg got blown off in a car bomb. He has stunning green eyes contrasted by jet black hair and olive skin. He’s featured in Richard Engel’s video on Iraqi children paying the price of war on Engel’s MSNBC.com Iraq blog.
Why Engel’s reports are not more […]

 Brazilians and revelers celebrating carnival this year in Rio de Janeiro might be perplexed by the sight of something that belongs anywhere but the raucous bacchanalia that is carnival.
A float depicting the Holocaust is set to parade down the streets of Rio de Janeiro during Brazil’s infamously raunchy annual festivities.
Whose idea was this? The Unidos da Viradouro samba […]