The aviation industry is on the verge of a trade war over the issue of regulating the airline industry’s greenhouse emissions. Reports say hope is dwindling for a global deal on the aviation industry’s emissions ahead of a deadline in October. The European Union had signed last month a temporary freeze of its requirement that all aircraft pay for carbon emissions through the EU

‘I am here to stay,’ is the message which Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has to convey to his detractors at home and abroad. In a rare, exclusive interview given to the Argentinian newspaper Clarín, shared with London’s Observer newspaper (carried out amid the sound of artillery fire resounding through his presidential palace in Damascus) Assad made it stunningly clea

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner is beginning to lose his peace. Barack Obama is going through one of the most bruising weeks of his presidency, with scandals over Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department delivering fatal blows to his image. Just six months into his second term, the president has found himself in a place he could never have thought of: that of Richard Nixo

Hundreds of thousands of textile workers in Bangladesh will go back to work today following a hiatus that punctuated the outrage after the collapse of a factory complex that killed 1,127 people. After the nine-storey Rana Plaza came down on April 24, the death toll continued mounting and every worker’s scream from under the piles of rubble brought hope, occasionally ending in despair. The

Palestinians yesterday marked 65 years of Naqba (catastrophe) since the creation of Israel. Thousands of people took to the streets all over the Palestinian territories and clashed with the Israeli policemen. The day is an occasion to remember Israeli aggression and cruelties. According to official Palestinian figures published this week, 5.3 million Palestinians, almost half of their total

The United States yesterday was dealing with two episodes which can prove deeply embarrassing for the Obama administration. First, was the revelation that the Justice Department obtained the telephone records of several Associated Press journalists last year. Second, a report showed an alleged undercover CIA functionary — photographs of his arrest flashed on Russian state TV— being

The euphoria will soon die down. In a few weeks, if not days, Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif, who is poised to become prime minister for a third time after a decisive victory in election, will have to grapple with a number of challenges awaiting his attention. The three most important of them are: tackle terrorism which is spreading, improve civil-military relations to make sure that he can rule

The death toll in two years of Syrian uprising has crossed 82,000 and 12,500 others are missing, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Most of the dead were killed by troops and militia loyal to President Bashar Al Assad and most of the missing are believed to have been detained by the government’s secret police and other loyalists, the monitoring group said. The Obser

In a democracy, elections are nothing new. But the sense of euphoria and pride surrounding the elections in Pakistan are perfectly justified. For the first time since the formation of the country, the elections held yesterday will pave the way for the transfer of power from one elected government to another, especially remarkable in a country where there have been three military coups and four

The battle for justice and statehood by Palestinians received a significant boost this week when world-famous scientist and bestselling author Stephen Hawking threw his weight behind their cause. In a decision that drew global attention and triggered heated debates, Hawking announced that he was boycotting a prestigious conference in Israel in protest over the state’s occupation of Palest

The trial of the surviving members of a neo-Nazi cell in Germany has come as a shock for a nation till now busy finding ways to deal with the flagging economies of its neighbours. In a case that has drawn international headlines, the trial in the Bavarian capital Munich is being seen as a test not only of Germany’s ability to stanch any far-right tendencies in its populace but also of the

Nigeria has been accused of using harsh tactics in battling Islamists. The New York Times this week carried an article which paints a gory picture of how the army is killing people and bringing truckloads of corpses to a hospital mortuary. The report says: “Large numbers of bodies, sometimes more than 60 in a day, are being taken by the Nigerian military to the state hospital, according t

The reshuffle of the Egyptian cabinet carried out by President Mohammed Mursi, even if nothing significant in the current turbulent political situation in the country, will help to defuse the crisis. The Prime Minister Hisham Qandil replaced the finance and planning ministers in a broader Cabinet reshuffle as the country struggles to conclude a long-stalled $4.8bn International Monetary Fund lo

Syrian rebels would appreciate a bit of help coming from any quarter, but it’s unlikely that they would appreciate if it came from Israel. For the same reason, the air strikes on Damascus by Israeli jets, which rocked the city for hours, deserve nothing but condemnation. With the attacks, Syria threatens to become a much wider and complicated regional conflagration. The government of

Malaysia’s ruling coalition has improved its own record by coming to power again. With just one result left to declare, the ruling United Malays National Organization had won 133 seats in the 222-member parliament, though falling well short of the two-thirds majority that the Prime Minister Najib Razak had aimed to capture in Sunday’s election. The victory extends the coalition&rsqu

The rise of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party in local elections, which has been called by political pundits as one of the strongest showings by a nontraditional party in Britain, is the latest case of the rise of populist and nationalist parties across Europe. The dramatic surge of the Independence Party in England and Wales, as shown by the results announced on Friday, has dealt a se

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, has announced that he intends to resign in the coming weeks from his peace-making role. The announcement might not have come as a surprise for Syria watchers. If at all, a few might be wondering why his resignation had taken so long. The reason is not his inability to carry out the job for which he was chosen, but the chaos and anarchy in Syr

The prism of India-Pakistan relations has become foggy once again. With the death in a Pakistani hospital of Indian citizen Sarabjit Singh early yesterday, the bitterness between both countries — divided amid one of the worst carnages in the twentieth century — has returned. Sarabjit, a resident of Punjab, was convicted for spying and for the Lahore and Faisalabad bomb blasts that k

Barack Obama has again vowed to take action to close the controversial prison camp at Guantánamo Bay declaring that he did not want any of its hunger-striking inmates to die of starvation. The statement has rekindled hopes as it comes after a long silence from the president on the issue and comes after a series of scathing reports in American media about the injustice being done to inmat

The European Court of Human Rights yesterday ruled that charismatic Ukrainian leader Yulia Tymoshenko has been unlawfully jailed by the government. This has come as a major victory for the former prime minister and revolutionary who pulled out all stops from jail not to let her incarceration muzzle her voice against the injustice meted out to her. All through, European leaders have stood by the