ATLANTA — Somewhere in the world, the sun is setting and its time to break fast. The world’s Muslims are in the middle of Ramadan, a month of daytime fasting, followed by evening communal meals and prayer. It will end with the celebration of Eid-al-Fitr, a morning of prayer capped by days of celebration, eating and visiting. Three hundred nightly regulars at Masjid al-Farooq follow the same schedule as every other Muslim in the world. But al-Farooq’s location is a little different. It is in Atlanta, Ga.,the chief city of the American Southeast, located in the middle of the Bible [...]
Last February wasn’t a good month for Terry Semel. Not only was the Yahoo! Chairman and CEO in the middle of an ambitious overseas expansion project, but his web search company had been called before Congress to testify about its involvement in a high-profile international incident. Bad news for any businessman, but for U.S. foreign policy it was a sudden and unsettling introduction to the reach of the information age. The trouble for Yahoo started with the jailing of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who had been convicted of “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities” after an email he [...]
JERUSALEM — When Israelis heard that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was coming to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, their reaction required no words, a shrug of the shoulders was enough. Most believed that Condi’s diplomatic prowess would achieve little in the Holy Land. This may be the land of miracles, but it is also the land of grudges, even among cousins. Make that especially among cousins. The prevailing view here even before Condi arrived on Wednesday was that as long as Palestinians continued battling one another, unable to decide on a unified strategy for the future, anything [...]
