BANGLADESH: Coup Bid Reveals Extremism Within Army

Bangladesh’s army has won paludits as leading United Nations peacekeepers, but the January coup attempt against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has exposed lurking religious extremism within its ranks.

2011 – A Year of Weather Extremes, with More to Come

The global average temperature in 2011 was 14.52 degrees Celsius (58.14 degrees Fahrenheit). According to NASA scientists, this was the ninth warmest year in 132 years of recordkeeping, despite the cooling influence of the La Niña atmospheric and oceanic circulation pattern and relatively low solar irradiance.

China Looks Both Ways on Iranian Oil

China’s response to calls from the West to join an oil embargo penalising Iran for its nuclear programme so far has been to choose the middle course typical of its non-interfering foreign policy of the last 30 years – denouncing sanctions on one hand yet working to protect its national interests on many fronts.

Mekong Unquiet Over Contain China Moves

Six countries that share the Mekong River are being drawn into a development turf war, exposing initiatives by the United States government and its Asian allies – Japan and South Korea – to contain China’s growing influence in the region.

ICELAND: Recovering Dubiously From the Crash

Three years ago, thousands of Icelanders were standing outside Iceland’s parliament building chanting "incompetent government" in an attempt to bring down the conservative government that had been seen as responsible for the collapse of the country’s banking system.

U.S. Probe of Border Attack Hardened Pakistani Suspicions

The Pakistani military leadership's response to the U.S. report on its helicopter attack on two Pakistani border posts Nov. 26 assailed the credibility of the investigation by Air Force Brig. Gen. Steven Clark and expressed doubt that the attack could have been "accidental".

The Logic and Limits of Nonviolent Conflict

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the uprisings in Egypt that unseated an authoritarian regime and rekindled the spark of nonviolent resistance around the world.

JAMAICA: “Mama P” Faces Prejudice, Economic Challenges

Running on promises of job creation, economic growth and wider stakeholder consultations, Jamaica's most popular politician and the country's first female prime minister Portia Simpson Miller swept to power in a victory almost no one had predicted.

BURMA: Dismantling a Dictatorship – Peacefully

As he dismantles a 50-year military dictatorship without a shot being fired, Burmese President Thein Sein is resorting to the political art of compromise.

Romanians Discover Street Protest

For more than a week, thousands have been demonstrating in cities across Romania. Participants from all walks of life bring to the fore the broadest array of demands in what looks like a celebratory discovery of street protest. The main call is against lack of transparency and accountability in decision-making.

EUROPE: Unrest Spreads Eastwards

Protests in Hungary and Romania are the first signs of anti-systemic mobilisation in the Eastern half of the continent. While protests in both countries indicate dissatisfaction with their governments’ authoritarian turn, their origins differ, as does the European Union’s reaction to them.

TURKEY: Filtering Out Internet Freedom

Fifteen respected academics from different Turkish universities signed a declaration in Ankara last week protesting recent state regulations restricting access to a variety of websites on ‘moral’ and ‘national integrity’ grounds.

DEVELOPMENT: Little Tobin, Less Robin

Europe’s apparent failure to forge broad agreement on introducing a financial transactions tax marks the latest setback for organisations counting on a similar worldwide fee to fund development aid in austere times.

KAZAKHSTAN: Dissent Stifled Amid Indifference

President Nursultan Nazarbayev, re-elected last April with an improbable yet typical 93 percent, presided last weekend over parliamentary elections that maintained his iron grip on his oil-rich country’s parliament, and further stifled dissent.

In Signal to Israel and Iran, Obama Delays War Exercise

The postponement of a massive joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise appears to be the culmination of a series of events that has impelled the Barack Obama administration to put more distance between the United States and aggressive Israeli policies toward Iran.

LATIN AMERICA: Iran Flaunts Its Allies

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sought to freshen up his international image on a tour of Latin America and demonstrate that his country does have friends in the world, while almost every day events place him at the epicentre of fraught geopolitical tensions.

MIDEAST: To Go On Talking

A second meeting of Palestinian and Israeli negotiators took place this week in Amman, Jordan, and expectedly bore no tangible result – except for an agreed third round by month’s end.

Bumper 2011 Grain Harvest Fails to Rebuild Global Stocks

The world's farmers produced more grain in 2011 than ever before. Estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show the global grain harvest coming in at 2,295 million tonnes, up 53 million tonnes from the previous record in 2009.

Clinton Revives Dubious Charge of “Covert” Iranian Nuclear Site

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's charge Tuesday that Iran had intended to keep the Fordow site secret until it was revealed by Western intelligence revived a claim the Barack Obama administration made in September 2009.

China Greets Gloomy New Year

For much of last year world politicians and market watchers dreamed of China coming to the rescue of a stumbling global economy while Beijing mandarins sat on the fence fretting about high inflation and social instability inside their country. As China prepares to greet the Year of the Dragon later this month, many predict more gloom and doom, and some are expecting that the battle to stave off recession will be fought closer to home.

MIDEAST: Unwilling, Unable, Yet Talking

After a 15-month collapse, Palestinians and Israelis have met only to agree on sitting down face-to-face publicly once more on Friday. So far there is no breakdown, but no breakthrough either.