Planet Watch
Doomsday Clock: three minutes of midnight
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the hands of its iconic Doomsday Clock at three minutes to midnight—two minutes closer than in 2014.
Tag: Russia
Europe
Europe: destroying freedom to save it
At thier meeting in Paris to condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo, European Union government ministers issued a statement calling for further restrictions on the Internet.
Planet Watch
Behind oil slump: shale boom or geopolitics?
Experts tell us the North American shale oil boom is responsible for low prices despite Middle East unrest. But the price slump serves Western aims of weakening Russia and Iran.
The Caucasus
ISIS hand in Chechnya attack?
The Russian policy establishment is hypothesizing an ISIS hand in the bloody attack by Chechen insurgents in Grozny—and implying that the West is in turn behind ISIS. (Map via La Croix International)
Central America
Nicaragua: opposition mounts to canal scheme
With work about to begin on an inter-oceanic canal through Nicaragua, campesinos who stand to be evicted for the mega-scheme pledge resistance and warn of a "massacre."
Iraq
Kurds as pawns in Turko-Russian game?
An alarming confrontation between Turkish and Russian warplanes over the Black Sea ironically comes as both Ankara and Moscow seek to divide Kurds from the Syrian rebels.
Europe
Russia serves ultimatums to Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars pledge to resist Russian demands that they register their Majlis as a "civic organization" and surrender "forbidden" Islamic literature.
Mexico
Fortune magazine ranks top five global cartels
Fortune magazine issued a list of the biggest organized crime groups in the world: elements of Japan's Yakuza, Russian mafia, two Italian syndicates and Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel.
Inner Asia
Next: Free Siberia?
In a little-noted irony, as Vladiimir Putin backs the "People's Republics" in eastern Ukraine, he has cracked down on a separatist movement that has emerged in Siberia.
Iraq
China factor in the fight against ISIS
China's participation in the Paris summit on building an international effort against ISIS comes as Uighur militants were detained on suspicion of recruiting for the "Islamic State."
Europe
Russia: ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatar leaders, forced into exile by Russian judicial orders, accuse Moscow of a campaign of raids and harassment aimed at driving Tatars from the peninsula.
Europe
Fascist pseudo-anti-fascism advances in Russia
Putin's political machine convened an "anti-fascist" summit at Yalta in annexed Crimea, attended by Hungary's Jobbik party, the British Nationalist Party and other neo-fascist entities.