IHT Rendezvous: Environmental Warning Fatigue Sets in

Record levels of industrial smog? A dwindling number of fish in the world’s oceans? A 4° Celsius warming in global temperatures by the end of the century?How about environmental warning fatigue?Global concern for major environmental issues is at an all time low, according to the results of a global poll of more than 22,000 people in 22 countries, released earlier this week.“Scientists report that...

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At War Blog: Remembering a Silent Success in Afghanistan

December in the mountains of southern Afghanistan greeted me and my men with strong and seemingly endless gusts of wind. The frigid temperatures were equally unforgiving. Our living quarters were constructed out of cardboard boxes and plastic sheeting, which didn’t create much of an escape. The highlight of my day, despite the obvious threat, was leading patrols as a squad leader. The physical activity...

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At War Blog: Group Seeks Out and Helps Homeless Veterans

Combat zones exist in many different places. For Joe Leal, the founder of the Vet Hunters Project, an all-volunteer group of veterans who have made it their mission to track down homeless comrades, the battlefield is a lone soldier living in his truck in the wake of a home foreclosure, or a veteran living in a dark, deafening homeless encampment secreted under a freeway.“You know the expression ‘never...

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Lens Blog: The Largely Unknown Photography of Lola Álvarez Bravo

The year 2007 was a pretty good one for rediscovering long-forgotten images in Mexico. Most people already know about Robert Capa’s Mexican suitcase, a trove of his work from the Spanish Civil War. But that same year an unknown archive of vintage prints by Mexico’s greatest photographers was also discovered, left behind in the longtime home of Lola Álvarez Bravo.The find, known as the Gonzalez-Rendon...

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Benedict XVI to Keep His Name and Become Pope Emeritus

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI will keep the name Benedict XVI and become the Roman pontiff emeritus or pope emeritus, the Vatican announced Tuesday, putting an end to days of speculation on how the pope will be addressed once he ceases to be the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics on Thursday. Benedict, the first pope to resign voluntarily in six centuries, will dress in...

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Iran Enters Nuclear Talks in a Defiant Mood

TEHRAN — When Iran’s nuclear negotiating team sits down with its Western counterparts in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, it will offer no new plans or suggestions, people familiar with the views of the Iranian leadership say. More likely, they say, the Iranian negotiators will sit with arms crossed, demanding a Western change of heart. Iran’s leaders believe that the effects of Western sanctions...

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IHT Rendezvous: As Oscars Fever Builds, Some Chinese Ask: ‘What About Our Films?’

BEIJING — As Oscar fever grows around the world with the 85th Academy Awards set to begin in Los Angeles just hours from now, excitement is building in China, even though it has no films in competition. There is also a sense of frustration here about why China’s movies aren’t nominated for the world’s biggest awards?China sees itself as advancing in many ways, growing richer and more powerful, so...

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U.N. Rejects Claim for Direct Compensation to Victims of Cholera Epidemic in Haiti

There will be no direct financial compensation from the United Nations for the more than 8,000 Haitians who died and the 646,000 sickened by cholera since the disease struck the earthquake-ravaged country in October 2010, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the Haitian president this week. More than 15 months after the United Nations received a legal claim seeking to hold peacekeeping troops...

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BBC Leaders Have Harsh Words for Own Corporation

LONDON (AP) — The BBC is a bloated, top-heavy, and poorly-led corporation staffed by dull executives — and that's just what the company's leadership says. In 3,000 pages of emails and interviews published Friday, the BBC's top officials have harsh words for the institutional culture of their respected media group, whose reputation has been tarnished by a pedophilia scandal. Leading...

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Police Replace Pistorius Detective in Embarrassing Setback

PRETORIA, South Africa — The South Africa police replaced the lead investigator in the Oscar Pistorius homicide case on Thursday after embarrassing revelations that he was under investigation himself for seven criminal charges of attempted murder. The decision by the national police commissioner to remove the investigator, Hilton Botha, was the latest in a series of abrupt twists and setbacks...

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IHT Rendezvous: True or False? The Tussle Over Ping Fu's Memoir

Did Ping Fu, a prominent Chinese-American businesswoman and author of a recent memoir, “Bend, not Break,” make up her horrible experiences during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in order to gain United States citizenship? Did they help her become an American by claiming political asylum?That’s what her critics, many of them fellow Chinese-Americans, say. It’s an accusation that can stick. As a recent...

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For His Second Act, Japanese Premier Plays It Safe, With Early Results

Toru Hanai/ReutersPrime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose policies have sent the Tokyo stock market up, will visit Washington this week. TOKYO — Since taking office less than two months ago, Japan’s outspokenly hawkish new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has been in what some political analysts are calling “safe driving mode.” He has carefully avoided saying or doing anything to provoke other Asian nations,...

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Anti-Apartheid Leader Forms New Party in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG — Mamphela Ramphele, a respected veteran of the struggle against apartheid, announced on Monday that she had formed a new political party to compete against the governing African National Congress, calling on South Africans to “join me on a journey to build the country of our dreams.” The party is called Agang, a Sotho word meaning “build,” said Dr. Ramphele, 65, a medical doctor...

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IHT Rendezvous: Should Common Plastics Be Labeled Toxic?

THE HAGUE — Hoping to reduce one of the most ubiquitous forms of waste, a global group of scientists is proposing that certain types of plastic be labeled hazardous.The group, led by two California scientists, wrote in this week’s issue of the scientific journal Nature:We believe that if countries classified the most harmful plastics as hazardous, their environmental agencies would have the power...

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IHT Rendezvous: Should Common Plastics Be Labeled Toxic?

THE HAGUE — Hoping to reduce one of the most ubiquitous forms of waste, a global group of scientists is proposing that certain types of plastic be labeled hazardous.The group, lead by two California scientists, wrote in this week’s issue of the scientific journal Nature:We believe that if countries classified the most harmful plastics as hazardous, their environmental agencies would have the power...

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The Lede: Spectacular Video of Meteor Over Siberia

Video posted on YouTube Friday appeared to catch an explosion caused by a meteor streaking over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.Last Updated, 11:08 a.m. As our colleagues Ellen Barry and Andrew Kramer report, Russians recorded video of bright objects, apparently debris from a meteor, “streaking through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, accompanied by a boom that damaged buildings across...

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Pope Says He Will Be ‘Hidden To The World’ In Retirement

VATICAN CITY — Saying he would soon be “hidden to the world,” Pope Benedict XVI took his leave of parish priests and clergy of the Diocese of Rome on Thursday in a moving encounter during which he gave a personal, and incisive, recollection of the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops 50 years ago that set the Roman Catholic Church’s course for the future. Benedict, who announced...

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At War Blog: How to Help Veterans Succeed in College

In 2004, I returned from a year in Iraq to finish my undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island. Since I took more than a year’s leave of absence to deploy, I was forced to reapply to the university. While writing another entrance essay to explain how I spent my “year off,” I wondered why my school didn’t have a peer support system for its students who are veterans.In just a few years,...

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India Ink: In Kashmir, Clashes and Dwindling Supplies As Curfew Continues

The Kashmir Valley is on the fourth day of a government-imposed shutdown begun immediately after the hanging of the militant Muhammad Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, who comes from the town of Sopore in Baramulla district. Many residents are running out of food and milk in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. Meanwhile, dozens have been injured and at least one killed in protests against Mr. Afzal’s...

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The Lede: Latest Updates on the Pope’s Resignation

The Lede is providing updates on Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement on Monday that he intends to resign on Feb. 28, less than eight years after he took office, the first pope to do so in six centuri...

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