Cyprus's communist president is retiring, and his successor will face a big task in trying to reunify the divided country.
Category: War and peace
Why Lincoln matters
Spielberg's Lincoln is a great political drama. It also has a message for the modern Republican Party: one day they will have to choose whether they are the party of Lincoln or the party of the Confederacy.
Islands in an East Asian storm
What's going on in the East China Sea? Are China and Japan really on the brink of war? And whose side is Malcolm Fraser on?
Mission accomplished in Mali?
French forces are now in control of all the towns of northern Mali. But the Americans had an easy time of it in Iraq at first; the hard part comes later.
Failure in Afghanistan?
Australia's mission in Afghanistan is a failure, as Hugh White says, but that failure derives from a much larger failure of American policy.
Israel throws the switch to security
Benjamin Netanyahu is about to embark on the task of building a new governing coalition. Good timing, then, that Israel's security concerns are in the headlines this week, rather than the possibly more troublesome domestic matters.
A theological view of nuclear weapons
Iran stresses the importance of Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons. Should we take him seriously?
Austria votes to keep conscription
Austrians voted yesterday to retain military conscription, in a victory for the centre-right ahead of this year's general election. But that's very much going against the trend in Europe. It's also something of a reversal of the usual position.
Torture goes to the movies
A film about the hunt for bin Laden puts torture in the spotlight. Will America face up to what Bush and Cheney did?
So, what’s Mali, and should we care?
Mali isn't Iraq. It isn't even Afghanistan. But whether that's enough to promise success for François Hollande, only time will tell.
The World is Not Enough 