The Economist

Syria’s war and diplomacy: Argument and arms

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Posted by admin 18 days ago (http://www.economist.com)

THE diplomatic air is becoming increasingly thick in the run-up to an international conference on Syria, starting perhaps as soon as June 15th but more likely in July, which few people think likely to lead to an early peace. Britain and France were lambasted by other countries in the European Union for insisting on May 27th that the EU’s embargo of weapons to Syria should lapse at the end of the

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Israel and Palestine: Boosting the West Bank’s economy

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Posted by admin 18 days ago (http://www.economist.com)

A Palestinian carving for peace EVEN when the peace process seemed to be getting somewhere a couple of decades ago, Israelis and Palestinians rarely paraded on common ground. But one such example was on display in May when some 300 Israeli and Palestinian businesspeople and a posse of former military men travelled to Jordan to present their vision of a co-operative future once their leaders fin

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Syria’s political opposition: Disarray

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Posted by admin 18 days ago (http://www.economist.com)

Khatib in Istanbul, so far armed only with diplomacy WESTERN governments have been urging Syria’s political opposition to sort itself out, if it is to make headway at the peace conference expected soon in Geneva. But at an ongoing meeting in Istanbul, they have thus far failed to do so. The main umbrella organisation, the Syrian National Coalition, was supposed to do three things: expand its me

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The UN and the World Bank: Rare co-operation

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Posted by admin 18 days ago (http://www.economist.com)

A PAIR of bespectacled Koreans smiled down from giant banners flying over the slums of Kinshasa, the crowded and chaotic capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The double act being advertised was the UN’s secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and the World Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, a Korean-American medical expert. Together they visited Africa’s seediest mega-city on May 22nd to launch a no

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South Africa’s economy: Muddle through will no longer do

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Posted by admin 18 days ago (http://www.economist.com)

AS MOST of Africa begins to prosper, the continent’s biggest economy is faltering. Figures released on May 28th showed that GDP in South Africa rose at an annualised rate of just 0.9% in the first quarter. A new report from the African Development Bank (ADB) and the OECD, a rich-country think-tank, trumpeting Africa’s economic prospects, ranks South Africa a lowly 48th out of 52 countries in t

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Syria’s war: How about diplomacy?

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Posted by admin 25 days ago (http://www.economist.com)

Do they have ways of making Assad talk? “WE’RE back where we were a year ago,” says a Western diplomat of the latest international push to bring Syria’s warring parties to the negotiating table. Since the American secretary of state, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, announced on May 7th their intention to back a peace conference, the pace of diplomacy has accelerated. Mr

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Strife in Iraq: Worse and worse

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Posted by admin 25 days ago (http://www.economist.com)

A WIDENING arc of violence across Iraq is raising fears that the country could fracture under the weight of sectarian and political strife. Attacks in the past week stretched from north of Baghdad, the capital, to the normally calm southern city of Basra, killing more than 200 people. The targets included Sunni mosques as well as Shia districts and Iraqi security forces. On May 20th alone, at lea

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Nigeria’s northern insurgency: A city under siege

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Posted by admin 25 days ago (http://www.economist.com)

Just your friendly neighbourhood cops SOLDIERS sit sweltering in bunkers made from sandbags on the streets of Maiduguri, a town in north-eastern Nigeria at the centre of a four-year Islamist revolt. Around them, young boys on clanking bicycles carve through sand blown in from the Sahara, which has been slowly burying a town that was once, long ago, a thriving Islamic trading centre. It now face