From a four part article in Der Spiegel: … now those who in the past showed very little interest for the European Commission, the Parliament and the bureaucracy in Brussels — because they assumed that they weren’t expected to be interested in these things — are reading daily about the strange things European statesmen have… Read More »
If you’ve ever crossed borders in most of Europe – at the airport, by ferry or by road – you know that you don’t get ‘controlled’ as you enter the next country. That is about to change. To blame, claim France and Italy, is the Arab Spring. So many people are fleeing North Africa to… Read More »
When the protagonists are black people. That is the only conclusion one can draw from the unhinged claims that the Ivory Coast is on “the brink of genocide” following the disputed presidential elections and the stand-off between the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo and president-elect Alassane Ouattara. Read it all here. HT to @johnkeithhart
Image via Wikipedia Pretty embarrassing: It is a German tradition that the president becomes an honorary godparent to the seventh child born to any family. But the custom has proved awkward for President Christian Wulff after he became godfather to a baby born into a neo-Nazi family. A local mayor even received death threats after… Read More »
By the ever impressive Planet Money team.
The Economist has a nice article on immigration in Germany. If you can recall, Angela Merkel recently said that multiculturalism has utterly failed in Germany. This was following the furore that was raised by the publication of a book that claimed that immigrants and muslims were causing the downfall of Germany. The book was written… Read More »
Jonathan Rosenthal, The Economist’s European finance correspondent writes about my (for now) adopted city, Berlin: Iconoclasm is not just the preserve of the rebellious poor. In Berlin’s opera houses—there are still three, despite the broken budget—audiences are known to boo and hiss. When I went to a performance directed by Nigel Kennedy earlier this year… Read More »
Senegalese economist Sanou Mbaye on some of the problems French West African countries have been facing since independence: On the monetary front, the CFA Franc Zone’s member countries dismantled the federal structure that united them [French West Africa and French Central Africa] during French occupation and erected trade barriers instead. The CFA franc issued by… Read More »
Stephen Smith writes in the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine about the relationship between France and its former colonies in Africa. One of the things he looks at is what has changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and what has not. There is a little about the economic relations, but I miss a… Read More »
From the BBC: A team of observers from Commonwealth countries has arrived in the UK to watch how the election is conducted and suggest how it could be improved. It will be the first time a Commonwealth team has observed elections in a developed country. They will observe candidates’ campaigns, polling stations and the count,… Read More »