TEL AVIV, Israel — As a seemingly inexhaustible source of bad news, the Middle East is arguably the perfect place to go in search for the silver lining that the proverb promises for every cloud. The Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki demonstrated last week how it is done: In an article in the Wall Street Journal, he argued eloquently that the desperate situation in Iraq should be seen as part of a struggle comparable with the American civil war and he challenged skeptics with the question: “Why expect freedom to come easy to Iraq?” As it turned out, al-Maliki is [...]
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — Authorities in Kazakhstan recently passed a constitutional amendment that could allow President Nursultan Nazarbayev to remain in office for the rest of his life, but a Shakespearean drama playing out among members of the country’s ruling family has largely dominated the local media spotlight. At issue is whether Nazarbayev, who has led Kazakhstan since the late 1980s, is running a politically motivated investigation into his son-in-law, who claims to have fallen out of the president’s favor since privately revealing his own interest in running for president in 2012. Actions taken over the past month by Kazakh authorities [...]
TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned to Tokyo Saturday from what he described as a “very satisfying” debut at the Group of Eight summit in Germany. Yet despite being quick to claim some personal success in steering international discussions on subjects including climate change, he returns to another in a series of polls showing support for his cabinet has plummeted in recent weeks. A survey by the Yomiuri Shimbun published Friday (June 8) showed Abe cabinet’s approval rating had sunk to 32.9 percent — a 17 percent drop from a poll conducted by the same newspaper less than [...]
