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This week, Colombia’s re-elected president, Alvaro Uribe, officially began his second term in office. There has never been a more popular leader in Colombia’s history than Uribe. Last year, he spearheaded a campaign to get the constitution amended to allow incumbent leaders to seek a second term. With his typical unfailing determination he succeeded, paving the way for his historic victory in May. In the 2006 May election, the conservative hard-liner won 26.7 million votes, representing 62.2 per cent of the vote. The Oxford- and Harvard-educated president not only surpassed the number of votes he received in the previous election […]

The Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is already changing the way the U.S. Air Force does business, could undergo an evolutionary leap in endurance, or the time the aircraft can stay in the air, in the next few years. Global Hawk, produced by Northrop Grumman Corp., can fly autonomously for up to 35 hours at a time, at an altitude of 60,000 feet or higher, while scanning an area of some 40,000 square miles, according to the company. With a more advanced engine, however, Global Hawk could stay up far longer — weeks, even months at a time, […]

When Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler presided over the July transfer of the American-led anti-terrorism task force in the Horn of Africa from the U.S. Marines Corps to the U.S. Navy, his statement of achievement was simple. “Since the camp was established [in late 2002] there has not been one terrorist attack in the Horn of Africa, although there have been many attempts,” he said. When the American military’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was established in November 2002 in the tiny country of Djibouti, the region was fast becoming a theater of operations for […]

After July, Malaysians will grow old gracefully. Or, in any case, those who follow Malaysian Islamic law. The country’s National Fatwa Council (Jawatankuasa Fatwa) closed its three-day meeting on July 27, deciding to forbid the country’s Muslims from using botox, among other prohibitions. To settle questions of what is halal (allowed) and haram (forbidden) for Malaysia’s Muslims, the Fatwa Council meets regularly to mull over international Islamic scholarship. They pronounce on issues as modern as donating zakat funds via text-message (halal) and as serious as euthanasia (decision forthcoming). But Malaysia is no Iran. Since 1957, Malaysia’s parliament has been run […]

The deepening crisis in Lebanon initially generated a flurry of commentary claiming that Israel had become engaged in a conflict against Shia Islamist radicalism, and that its intent to defeat (Iran-backed) Hezbollah had the full support of the Sunni Arab world. The initial criticism of Hezbollah by the Sunni Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan fueled this analysis, and one op-ed piece from a U.S. newspaper published a week after hostilities broke out was titled “Iran against the Arabs.” Furthermore, an advisor to Israel’s defense minister recently said: “We are finally going to fight Hezbollah on the ground. […]

On any given night in north Bogotá, groups of athletic, broad shouldered young men with cropped hair, conversing in their native American-English, can be seen enjoying beers in the upmarket bars of the Colombian city. Most of these men are among the 800 U.S military personnel and 600 U.S. civilian government contractors allowed to work in Colombia as part of the U.S. aid package known as Plan Colombia. It has been almost a year since the first phase of Plan Colombia officially ended. Since then the Colombian government has been left wondering whether U.S aid to Colombia will continue to […]

Cuban President Fidel Castro Ruz transferred power to his younger brother Raúl on Monday night, July 31, after doctors said he needed surgery to stop intestinal bleeding. In a letter read by his secretary, Carlos Valenciaga, on Cuban national television, the 79-year-old Fidel announced that because of ”an intestinal crisis” he would temporarily relinquish the presidency to his 75-year-old brother, who serves as Cuba’s defense minister. “The operation obliges me to spend several weeks in repose, away from my responsibilities and duties,” Fidel’s statement, as read by Valenciaga, said. “Because our country is threatened in these circumstances by the government […]

A rising chorus in the United States and elsewhere is now saying that the key to bringing peace to the Middle East, and ending the 23-day-old war in Lebanon, can be found in Syria. (It could also be found in Iran, but talking to Syria is a lot easier to swallow for Washington than talking to Tehran.) Among those to loudly lobby for dialogue with Syria are the veteran journalist Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, the Syria-expert at Oklahoma University Joshua Landis, Professor David Lesch, who is a biographer of President Bashar al-Asad, former Secretary of State Warren […]

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice drew many raised eyebrows when she predicted that the battle between Israel and Hezbollah marked the ‘birth pangs’ of a new Middle East. Maybe she was showing extraordinary prescience; maybe foolhardy optimism. Several weeks and hundreds of deaths after the conflict erupted, the path to a ‘new’ Middle East looks as treacherous as it has for a generation. The deck seems stacked against Secretary Rice’s hopeful forecast. The government of Israel is determined – and is solidly backed by public opinion at home – to put an end to the Hezbollah threat and thereby […]

Time moves at a different pace in the Middle East. Believe it or not, it was only last March that Israeli voters elected Ehud Olmert and his new party, Kadima (Forward), to lead the country. During the campaign, Olmert, the heir apparent to the ailing former prime minister and army general Ariel Sharon, had spelled out his promise to pull most Israelis from the West Bank and draw the country’s permanent borders, without waiting for Palestinians to decide if they were ready to accept Israel’s right to exist. Since then, thousands of rockets have smashed into Israel, and the country’s […]

In the Indian capital New Delhi there is widespread belief among the conservative right wing that, with the impending U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement, India has sold its soul to the United States by giving up “sovereign” rights over its civilian nuclear reactors. In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, American critics say the world’s most powerful nation has given unwarranted and dangerous concessions to India, a country that exploded a nuclear bomb in 1998 and has not even signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Agreeing to sell nuclear technology to a country surrounded by the likes of Pakistan and China will lead to an unprecedented […]

Step aside MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga. A new social networking site has joined the ranks. You won’t find cursing here. Dating through this site is not permitted. And female members can only post photographs of themselves wearing a headscarf. Welcome to MuslimSpace.com, a new and rapidly growing social networking site catering to the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide. MuslimSpace is the brainchild of Mohamed El-Fatatry, a U.A.E.-born Egyptian professional Web developer, designer and programmer living in Finland. A former MySpace user, El-Fatatry created MuslimSpace in March 2006 because he said he was tired of the un-Islamic content of popular social networking […]