George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be the same person. They just look different. A South Korean will head the United Nations. Turkey is meddling in Kirkuk. The tide of history is turning in Latin America. Cheney is actually a reincarnation of LBJ, and there’s more to the flap between Georgia and Russia than meets the eye. Indeed, many wild things were asserted in the world’s English-language op-ed pages this week. But far more outrageous claims could have been made. No, wait, they were: North Korea said it’s going to detonate a nuke. On what may have prompted this [...]
ACCRA, Ghana — On the job at a Internet cafe near the city center, cousins Aaron Animley and Rashid Teye Appeynarh inflict their musical tastes on the paying customers. Their fondness for hip-hop, especially selections featuring four-letter words, unsurprisingly conforms to the passion of their peers across the Atlantic. The artists in permanent heavy rotation by the self-styled DJs include the late Tupac Shakur and hip-hop impresario Jay-Z. “I like Jay-Z from the scratch to the up. A boy on the street grow up to be a superstar, millionaire,” Appeynarh, 23, said. “He encourage me whenever I see him. The [...]
BUDAPEST, Hungary — In parts, the May 26 speech Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany gave to his Socialist party was something of a grand mea culpa. “I almost died when I had to pretend for one and a half years as if we were governing,” he said on tape. “I am through with this. We either do it and then you’ve got your man, or you pick someone else.” At other times, the speech seemed a sweeping political treatise delivered in the belligerent incoherence of a taxi driver stuck in traffic. “Since they know my mother’s name . . . [...]
