In news out of Zimbabwe, the country’s finance minister, who is also the opposition MDC party’s secretary-general, escaped unharmed from a car crash involving a truck. You’ll recall that last year, opposition leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was involved in a similar accident that took the life of his wife. Tsvangirai walked away with minor injuries. The news here is the timing of the accident, which comes on the heels of a visit by South African President Jacob Zuma, newly invested in mediation efforts to implement Zimbabwe’s long-stalled power-sharing government. I’ve followed some of Zuma’s interventions in the Off-the-Radar [...]
My recent prediction that Germany would be the big loser from the Greek debt crisis might have been premature. Although in all fairness, with this story pinballing back and forth every 10 minutes or so, any prediction is simultaneously premature and outdated the moment it is uttered. Be that as it may, although German Chancellor Angela Merkel is certainly emerging as the “bad guy” in this game of Greek poker, she’s not necessarily losing. In fact, her approach seems to be to nod her head, Yes, to each new proposal, while uttering the word, No. Guarantee EU support for Greece? [...]
Once again, the continuing back and forth on an EU-U.S. bank data-sharing deal is illustrative of some potential post-Lisbon shifts in the EU’s wish list. In particular, it looks like reciprocity is the new transparency: Last month, the European Parliament blocked a provisional deal between the European Union and Washington to permit the continued exchange of such data. The move by Parliament was partly a bid to assert new powers to decide issues concerning European security jointly with E.U. governments. But the move also reflected deepening unease in Europe over the way personal data are increasingly used by companies and [...]
