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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Letter from Europe: Observing the Vatican From Within

ROME — On Feb. 11, the day Benedict XVI stunned the world with the announcement that he would resign from the papacy, Giovanni Maria Vian was at home, getting ready. It was not surprising that the editor of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s newspaper, should have been among the handful of people who had advance notice. Sworn to secrecy, Mr. Vian told his staff to listen carefully to Vatican...

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India Ink: What They Said: Budget 2013-14

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the Union budget in Parliament on Thursday morning. Reactions were mixed from analysts who felt that while the finance minister had delivered a satisfactory budget given the country’s economic climate, more could have been done to attract foreign investment.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking with Doordarshan News:Given the challenges facing our...

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India Ink: Revisiting the Horror in Sri Lanka

NEW DELHI — In the series of photographs shot in 2009, the bare-chested boy is first shown seated on a bench watching something outside the frame. Then he is seen having a snack. In the third image he is lying on the ground with bullet holes in his chest. The photographs, which were released last week by the British broadcaster Channel 4, appear to document the final moments in the life of 12-year-old...

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India Ink: Narmada Devi, the Housewife from Uttar Pradesh

Why do millions of people, from entire Indian villages to urbane middle managers to foreign tourists, brave the crowds at the Kumbh Mela? During this year’s 55-day pilgrimage, to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, an estimated 100 million Hindus and others are expected to take a holy dip in the Ganges River to wash away their sins. India Ink interviewed some of them.Narmada Devi, 45, a housewife from Varanasi,...

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India Ink: Laliji, the Octogenarian from Bihar

Why do millions of people, from entire Indian villages to urbane middle managers to foreign tourists, brave the crowds at the Kumbh Mela? During this year’s 55-day pilgrimage, to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, an estimated 100 million Hindus and others are expected to take a holy dip in the Ganges River to wash away their sins. India Ink interviewed some of them.Laliji, 80, from Chhapra, Bihar, was one...

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Insurgents Launch 4 Attacks in Afghanistan

KABUL — Afghan intelligence agents on Sunday shot and killed a man in a sport utility vehicle that officials said had been packed with explosives, foiling what they described as an attempt to set off a massive explosion in a neighborhood of narrow streets lined with foreign embassies. At about the same time, Taliban suicide attackers set off three separate car bombs in two provinces near...

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India Ink: In Hyderabad, Anger and Frustration

Srinivas Mahesh, 28, was snacking outside his hostel near the Konark Theater in Dishknagar, his usual hangout in Hyderabad, when he heard a loud explosion Thursday evening. Not long after, he saw smoke filling up the air. Once he realized it was a bomb blast, instead of rushing back to his hostel he resolved to helping the injured.“I saw disfigured bodies for the first time in my life,” he said. He...

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India Ink: Can Doordarshan’s New Look Attract Profits?

A Doordarshan newscast from the late 1990s.After it became the first TV channel in India in 1959, the public broadcaster Doordarshan enjoyed a monopoly on viewership for decades. Even after the government opened the airwaves to private players in 1992, Doordarshan enjoyed a 90 percent share of the audience in the 1990s and had no reason to take the threat of competition seriously.Twenty years later,...

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Car Bomb in Damascus Kills Dozens, Opposition Says

Sana/European Pressphoto AgencyAn injured man was carried near the site of a car bomb explosion in Damascus on Thursday. In renewed violence reaching the center of the Syrian capital, a car bomb exploded in Damascus on Thursday near the headquarters of President Bashar al-Assad’s ruling party, killing more than two dozen people, mainly civilians and but also including security forces, according to...

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Vladimir Pekhtin Resigns From Russian Parliament

MOSCOW — A senior lawmaker from Russia’s ruling party, who is also the chairman of Parliament’s ethics committee, resigned from the legislature on Wednesday after opposition bloggers revealed that he owned more than $1.3 million worth of luxury real estate in Florida, which he did not list on required disclosure forms. The lawmaker, Vladimir A. Pekhtin, said that he did not want the scandal...

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Pistorius Denies Murder in Killing of Girlfriend

PRETORIA, South Africa — Facing a charge of premeditated murder following the killing of his girlfriend, Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee track star and one of the world’s best-known athletes, flatly denied on Tuesday that he intended to take her life when he opened fire at a closed bathroom door at his home last week. “I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone...

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South African Leader Launches New Political Party

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Respected anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele launched a new political party on Monday to challenge South Africa's ruling ANC, saying self-interested and corrupt leaders were threatening the continent's biggest economy. Invoking the spirit of Nelson Mandela and the optimism that prevailed at South Africa's first all-race elections in 1994, Ramphele said the...

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IHT Rendezvous: In Singapore's Immigration Debate, Sign of Asia's Slipping Middle Class?

BEIJING — Immigration is a hot-button issue nearly everywhere in the world, though the contours of the debate vary from place to place. In the United States, sweeping changes to the law may offer legal residency for millions of people who have entered the country illegally, my colleague Ashley Parker reports.Here in Asia, in the nation of Singapore, the debate looks somewhat different: The government...

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India Ink: Newswallah: Bharat Edition

Jammu and Kashmir: A week-long curfew in the Kashmir Valley that was imposed after the execution of the militant Muhammad Afzal was lifted Saturday, NDTV reported. Supporters of Mr. Afzal, who hailed from the Sopore town of Baramulla district, believed that he received an unfair trial for his role in the deadly Parliament attack case of 2001. Internet and television services have been restored in...

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India Ink: The 'One Billion Rising' on the Streets of Delhi

On Valentine’s Day in Delhi, the pink band was ubiquitous, tied around arms, on wrists and foreheads, around necks and backpacks. Printed on it were the words “Enough! No More Violence Against Women.”On Thursday evening, as many set out for the customary Valentine’s Day dinner in the nation’s capital, several hundred men, women and children gathered at Parliament Street for an unorthodox celebration:...

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IHT Rendezvous: Glimpses of Jean Arp's World

CLAMART, France—The street is typical French suburbia, gray and peaceful, a far stretch from the narrow sidewalks, rooftops and, in early 20th century, artists’ studios of Montmartre, but only a few kilometers from Paris. Yet, in the 1930s, up this steep and curvy stretch, lived two members of the avant-garde — Jean Arp and Sophie Taueber. Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and James Joyce were...

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Letter from India: Executions as a Matter of Opinion

NEW DELHI — When Indian cops take defendants to court, they walk holding hands, as if they were grim lovers. In photographs and video footage of Muhammad Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, he can be seen being led in this manner by a man in uniform. But the state had no affection for Mr. Afzal. He was found guilty of helping terrorists who attacked the Indian Parliament in 2001, and thus of...

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 12

NEWS North Korea appeared to conduct its third, and probably largest, nuclear test on Tuesday, according to American and Asian officials, posing a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power. David E. Sanger reports from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul.Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise announcement on Monday that he will...

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Letter From Europe: France Takes a Step Back in Its History

PARIS — Many years ago in Ouagadougou, the dusty capital of Burkina Faso, a visiting couple from France ordered dinner in a French-owned restaurant called Le Safari whose offerings included dishes listed as “selon arrivage,” loosely translated as “depending on availability.” The overhead thunder of a French airliner on final approach to landing offered a more telling definition. “Not...

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