MEXICO CITY — For decades, the Mexican president’s annual Sept. 1 national address was an extravagant bit of political pageantry. The chief executive would kick off the event by touring the capital’s streets in a convertible, waving to adoring crowds under a shower of confetti. Then, he would strut into Congress and speak at length, sometimes for hours, on his administration’s achievements of that year. Today, the event remains a prime example of Mexican political theater, but with an important distinction — with the advent of democracy, the proceedings are now unscripted and occasionally unruly. In 2006, former President Vicente [...]
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – Uzbek migrants seeking to ply their trades in richer Central Asian neighbor Kazakhstan are in a high-stakes battle of wills with Kazakh authorities along the countries’ frontier, sparking clashes with border guards amid mounting concerns of an escalation in the political situation in this remote, oil-rich part of the world. Earlier this month, a group of some 60 Uzbek migrant laborers took a high-ranking border officer hostage after the bus carrying them into Kazakhstan was stopped. According to Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, he was released without incident — a better fate than one of his colleagues, who drowned [...]
VIENNA, Austria — Jamel, Germany, is haunted. Fastened onto the plains near the Baltic Sea, Jamel is a hamlet of a few dozen people; a quiet retreat from a quickened world. But this would-be sleepy little outback stirs with trouble, strangled by the choke hold that a clan of neo-Nazis have held it in for more than 15 years. Led by 30-something-year-old Sven Krueger, the gang of neo-Nazis has rooted out anyone who has dared to complain about their Nazi celebrations, their Nazi music blasting, their Nazi flags waving or the Nazi graffiti that mars the city’s infrastructure. Residents who [...]
