BAMAKO, Mali — Lambert Coulibaly, 40, seems an unlikely proponent of the global marketplace. Employed as a maintenance worker by a hotel in the River Quarter of Mali’s capital, he spends not a little of his day sitting around and smoking. Yet Coulibaly commutes to his job each day on a Chinese-made Yamaha motorcycle. As he travels around Bamako, he is joined by tens of thousands of Malians on motorcycles and mopeds, the majority of which are also Chinese. “The Chinese motorcycles are cheaper. Plus the Japanese are more expensive,” Coulibaly said. He said his Chinese-made Yamaha cost about $620. [...]
With respect to the U.S. Air Force’s program to replace its aging aerial refueling tankers, it may be time to expect the unexpected: that this big acquisition program may proceed hereafter without a major hitch. Sheer necessity may make it so, according to a defense analyst who has spoken with senior Air Force officials about the program. That driving necessity: “They do not have the money to keep this competition going” indefinitely, said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank. The Air Force had been very close to wrapping up a tanker replacement deal with The [...]
ANKARA, Turkey — Not since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire — the seat of the 400-year old Turkish Muslim caliphate — have Europeans been so preoccupied with Turkey. As poor Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Africa flood the gates of Europe in search of work, the prospect of Turkey’s accession into the EU has provoked the EU’s most heated existential crisis to date. Turkey, the gateway between Europe and the Middle East, began its Europeanizing mission well over half a century ago when it first applied to join what was then called the European Economic Community. Until [...]
