MELBOURNE ― The world has watched in horror as Libya’s Colonel Muammar el-Gadhafi uses his military to attack protesters opposed to his rule, killing hundreds or possibly thousands of unarmed civilians. Many of his own men have refused to fire on their own people, instead defecting to the rebels or flying their planes to nearby Malta, so Gadhafi has called in mercenaries from neighboring countries

MUNICH ― Having already agreed to double the AAA-rated lending capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility, the special fund created by eurozone states to provide assistance to troubled member economies, European Union countries are now discussing the conditions under which the EFSF’s funds will be made available. The crucial issue is the extent to which creditors will have to participat

BEIRUT ― To visit Hezbollah officials, you turn left off the airport road, just past a billboard that shows Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad coyly waving at motorists. You then enter a neighborhood known as the “southern suburbs,” which is the dense street fortress of the Shiite militia. Here lie the headquarters of the group that now forms the strongest bloc in Lebanon’s parliament. It’s an u

After an extensive tour of Africa in February 1960, Harold Macmillan, then British Prime Minister, made the famous “wind of change” speech. He said: “The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.”If the term “national consciousness” is replaced by “democratic consciousness,” the same kind of wind is blow