International Glance
In March 2007, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson flew to Kish Island, an Iranian resort awash with tourists, smugglers and organized crime figures. Days later, after an arranged meeting with an admitted killer, he checked out of his hotel, slipped into a taxi and vanished. For years, the U.S. has publicly described him as a private citizen who traveled to the tiny Persian Gulf island on private business.
But that was just a cover story. An Associated Press investigation reveals that Levinson was working for the CIA. In an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a team of analysts - with no authority to run spy operations - paid Levinson to gather intelligence from some of the world's darkest corners. He vanished while investigating the Iranian government for the U.S.
Missing American in Iran was on unapproved CIA mission
India's Supreme Court upholds anti-gay sex law
India's Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a 2009 lower court decision to decriminalize homosexuality, dealing a blow to gay activists who have fought for years for the chance to live openly in India's deeply conservative society.
The judges said only lawmakers and not the courts could change a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexuality.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community across India reacted to the surprise decision with defiance.
Uruguay Is First Nation to Legalize Marijuana Trade
Uruguay's Senate approved the world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Tuesday, an audacious and risky experiment that puts the government in charge of growing, selling and using a drug that is illegal almost everywhere else.
The vote was 16 to 13, with the governing Broad Front majority united in favor. The plan now awaits the signature of President Jose Mujica, who wants the market to begin operating next year.
Italian cleric in CIA rendition case sentenced to six years in prison
A Muslim cleric whose kidnapping by CIA agents sparked debate about extraordinary rendition was sentenced Friday in Italy to six years in prison for terrorism.
Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr was sentenced in Milan for his conviction on being part of a terrorist organization, Italy's ANSA news agency reported. Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was in Egypt during the trial and was sentenced without being in court.
Israeli former security chief: failure to end conflict is bigger threat than Iran
The failure to reach a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict poses a bigger existential threat to Israel than the Iranian nuclear programme, according a former head of the country's security agency, Shin Bet.
Yuval Diskin, who left office two years ago, criticised the continuing occupation and the growth of settlements in the West Bank, saying a solution based on two states would soon no longer be an option.
Unforgotten fighter of Korean war: U.S. pensioner a POW at 85
As autumn descended on a Korean countryside devastated by three years of intense war, a group of anti-communist guerrillas presented U.S. serviceman Merrill Edward Newman with a gold ring. It was September, 1953.
For Newman, the ring became a proud symbol of the role he played as an adviser to a group of battle-hardened partisans who fought deep behind enemy lines in a war that pitted the China- and Soviet-backed North against the U.S.-backed South.
Syria War Creates Generation of 1.1 Million Lost Children
The Syrian civil war is creating a generation of traumatized, isolated and under-educated children who are vulnerable to exploitation and recruitment by armed groups, the United Nations said in a report.
About 1.1 million of 2.2 million refugees registered with the UN’s refugee agency are children, and among those who are school-aged fewer than half are in school, according to the report released today the UN High Commissioner for Refugees based on its July-October 2013 survey of refugee children and their families in Lebanon and Jordan.
More Articles...
Page 85 of 180
