ILANIYYA, ISRAEL August 2006

With the Middle East reeling from yet another Arab-Israeli war, descendants of the settlers who built one of the oldest Jewish villages in Galilee in the mid 19th Century tell how they would never have come if they’d known the violence would have lasted so long.[…]

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NICOSIA, CYPRUS June 2006

After more than two years of stagnation, the leaders of Greek and Turkish Cyprus are due to meet early next month to see if there’s any way the island can be re-unified. The island has been divided by a UN buffer zone since Turkey invaded in 1974 – it says, to stop killings of the Turkish Cypriot community. The two leaders Tassos Papadopoulos and Mehmet Ali Talat never speak and there’s been no official contact between the two sides since a UN referendum on unification failed in 2004. […]

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CALCUTTA, May 2006

 The people of West Bengal have voted in the Communist Party for the seventh successive time. In its capital, Calcutta, a statue of Lenin dominates a main square and red flags of the hammer and sickle fly everywhere. So why have Indians not debunked communism? […]

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SAO PAULO April 2006

The United States and China will talk next week about China’s growing involvement in Latin America. In the past two years China has invested billions in the region – which Washington has, up to now, regarded as its sphere of interest. […]

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KRAKOW, POLAND February 2006

The southern Polish city of Krakow was once a centre of Jewish culture with a thriving community. For more than seven hundred years 70 per cent of the international Jewish community had some link back to Poland. Then came the Nazis; then the Soviet Union. And now Krakow Jewish community is technically only about 150 – although with Nazi and Soviet pogroms many covered up their true origins, and the real numbers are only just becoming known. […]

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ABILENE, TEXAS February 2006

President Bush this week announced an ambitious new energy policy. He wants oil from the Middle East to become a thing of the past with imports from there cut by 75 per cent within twenty years. More money would be spent on alternative technologies and Americans would have to end their addiction to oil. […]

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RABAT, MOROCCO December 2005

Throughout the year, the United States has hailed a series of elections in the Arab world – the latest in Iraq – as evidence that its foreign policy is getting results. But what can democracy really offer ordinary people? […]

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NEW MEXICO November 2005

Soon America’s Hispanic community is expected to make up a quarter of the population with a thousand billion dollars of spending power. But still many millions are living in poverty without citizenship or many of their basic needs met. And there’s where America’s missionaries step in. […]

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SEATTLE July 2005

As millions queue up to get rights to live in the United States, a new economic survey has found that you have less chance of getting rich in America than in much of Europe and developing world. The Centre for Economic Performance in London found that in Europe you have almost twice as much chance of breaking out, raising the question about how much of a myth is the American Dream. […]

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BEIRUT April 2005

Political tension has mounted in Lebanon since the killing in February of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri who did much to rebuild the country after its 15-year civil war. What is the risk of fresh conflict there? […]

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