JERUSALEM — At about 5 p.m. on Jan. 14, a loud blast rang out along the Jordanian road that leads to the main bridge connecting the Hashemite kingdom with its neighbor, Israel. The target of the remote-controlled explosion was a two-car convoy carrying Israeli diplomats posted to Jordan, traveling back to Israel for the weekend. The assassination attempt failed, but it triggered a number of investigations as well as rampant speculation on both sides of the Jordanian-Israeli border. Differing theories point to various possible extremist perpetrators. The most intriguing reports, however, quote insiders in Jordan’s security services who claim that [...]
A coalition government formed early last year is seen by many Zimbabweans as the last hope for a country that has long teetered on the edge of open conflict. In February 2009, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party agreed to form a fragile unity government with the Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), the party of long-time autocrat, President Robert Mugabe. The two parties’ power-sharing deal, brokered by the Southern African Development Corporation, was meant to head off potential widespread violence following disputed presidential and parliamentary elections in March 2008. The election, in which Mugabe finished [...]
As soon as Google publicly announced on Jan. 12 that it would no longer self-censor its search engine results for Chinese users, observers debated why the company had taken such a surprising decision. Proposed explanations included recognition that Google’s presence in China has not encouraged greater media freedoms, irritation at yet another massive hacking effort by Chinese-based computers, a lack of commercial success in the large but highly competitive Chinese market, and fears about undermining faith in the security of its emerging cloud-computing networks. Now evidence has arisen about why Google executives were so alarmed: The company experienced the nightmare [...]
