In terms of damage since 9/11, terror attacks have ranked above shark attacks but below just about anything else that could possibly be dangerous to Americans, including car crashes which have racked up between 33,800 and 43,500 deaths a year since 2001.
In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus was sentenced to eternal senseless labor as a punishment for insulting the gods. Until the end of time, he must push an enormous stone up the hill only to have it roll back over and over again. Turkey was granted candidate status in December 1999 — 50 years after it first applied for membership — but has managed 12 years later to close only one chapter of the accession negotiations. Despite uphill movement by Ankara, the stone keeps rolling back down again to block Turkey’s entrance to the EU.
If Spain and Italy apply for bailouts, the EU will be split between northern haves and southern have-nots. Can a house so divided long endure?
EU’s narrative that high wages, early retirement, and generous benefits have led several countries to the verge of bankruptcy is nothing but a fairy tale.
While the world’s attention is focused on the revolution in Egypt, street fighting in Libya, and the battle for Sana in Yemen, in democracy’s birthplace people are also taking to the streets, continuing to protest an austerity plan that many Greeks say will beggar them. On February 23, protesters conducted a 24-hour strike that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Athens.
The United States is helping Bulgaria develop its military capabilities to pave the way for the new EU member to deploy to various battlefields of the war on terror.
Those in charge of the IMF and EU might do well to heed the words of the Irish poet and revolutionary.
Though their crime rate is no higher than the population at large, Roma are the victims of the most widespread roundup of a minority since World War II.
Foreign ministers of the 27 European Union member states recently initiated the ratification process of Serbia’s Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA), a step toward eventual EU membership for Serbia. The granting of candidate status was left for a later date, though, in a move that mirrored the EU’s general strategy on Balkan accession: With one hand it giveth, and with the other it does not giveth quite yet.
Cafés are full in Athens, and droves of tourists still visit the Parthenon and go island-hopping in the fabled Aegean. But beneath the summery surface, there is confusion, anger, and despair as this country plunges into its worst economic crisis in decades.