Planet Watch

Obama and the KXL-TPP contradiction

Obama nixed the Keystone XL pipeline a day after announcing he will sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership—which includes mechanisms for challenging the KXL cancellation.

Southeast Asia

Burma: will ceasefire wind down opium war?

Burma’s regime signs a "national ceasefire" with ethnic rebels in the opium-producing north ahead of historic elections—but the biggest rebel armies didn’t sign on.

North Africa

Meanwhile in, um, Benghazi…

Missiles and mortar rounds were fired into a crowd of anti-Islamist demonstrators in central Benghazi, killing six and injuring many more.

Europe

Obama’s nuclear upgrade: Euro-missiles redux?

Revelation of Washington's plan to station missile-capable nuclear warheads in Germany was met with a Russian threat to deploy ballistic missiles in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.

Palestine

Bibi’s Holocaust revisionism: media complicit?

The New York Times, in its coverage of Bibi Netanyahu's fictional claims about the Holocaust originating with the Mufti of Jerusalem, gives undue weight to the theory's few proponents.

Greater Middle East

AKP-ISIS collaboration in Ankara massacre?

Several PKK sympathizers have been arrested in connection with the Ankara suicide blasts—but the Turkish left charges that the ruling AKP collaborated with ISIS in the attack.