In the center of Jerusalem is a series of platforms that were built over many centuries, known as the Temple Mount, on Mount Moriah. The stone peak of Mount Moriah is visible at the center of the Temple Mount.
July 25, 2011
In the center of Jerusalem is a series of platforms that were built over many centuries, known as the Temple Mount, on Mount Moriah. The stone peak of Mount Moriah is visible at the center of the Temple Mount.
LONDON—When asked how he envisioned India and Pakistan’s relationship developing after their bloody partition in 1947, Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah would tell the story of two brothers who clashed over the division of their inheritance. Eventually, they went to court, and Jinnah represented one of the brothers through the bitter proceeding. Two years later, Jinnah met with his client and asked how he was getting along with his brother. He replied, “Oh, once the case was decided, we became the greatest friends.”
BANGKOK (UPI) – Before it became the focus of ongoing mortar exchange between Thailand and Cambodia, the ancient Preah Vihear Temple was most infamous for its role in the “Cambodian push-back.”
WASHINGTON—Every spring, Forbes publishes its ranking of the richest men and women on the planet. One person you won’t see on the list is Burmese business tycoon Tay Za. The charismatic Tay Za is chief executive of the Htoo Group of Companies, a business empire founded during Burma’s era of democratic rule that spans logging, gems and jade, palm oil, construction, hotels and tourism, mobile-phone services, an airline and more. At 46, he is widely believed to be Burma’s first billionaire.
WASHINGTON—He was a West Point graduate, a four-star general, the hero of the allied assault on Adolf Hitler, and the first commander of NATO. During his eight-year presidency, he quadrupled America’s post-World War II military budget, increased the share of the federal budget spent on defense to more than 50 percent, ballooned America’s nuclear stockpile from 1,000 to 23,000 warheads, and oversaw a sitting army that was ten times larger than the military he first joined in 1911.
NEW DELHI—Thirty-one years ago this spring, the world was riveted by a tale of nuclear terrorism called The Fifth Horseman. In this best-selling novel, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi threatens to explode a three-megaton nuclear bomb hidden under New York City, unless an autonomous Palestinian state is immediately established. The book was so disturbing that French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing cancelled the sale of nuclear reactors to Libya, even though they were allegedly intended for peaceful purposes.
YANGON—As demonstrators from Tunis to Cairo to Tripoli wonder if their revolutions will succeed, Myanmar remains an unfortunate poster child for what happens when revolutions go wrong. With a population equal in size to the United Kingdom, and a per capita income of less than two US dollars per day, Myanmar has suffered under military rule since 1962.
Washington, Dec. 16 (UPI) — As U.S. President Barack Obama battles Senate Republicans over ratification of the new U.S.-Russia START treaty, it’s worth remembering that the phrase at the heart of this treaty – “arms reduction”—was born 23 years ago this week, in a high-profile summit between the United States and the Soviet Union in Washington.
The recent release of Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, after deeply flawed elections that allowed the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, to tighten its half-centurylong grip on the country, raises numerous political questions: What comes next for her? Will the ruling junta engage her newly reconstituted National Democracy Party? Will other political prisoners be freed?
WASHINGTON—The topic of assassination lends itself to one of the recurrent parlor games of world history. If John F Kennedy had never been assassinated, would the United States have gotten out of Vietnam? If Yitzhak Rabin hadn’t met an assassin’s bullet, would the Oslo Accords have led to peace between Israelis and Palestinians? If Archduke Franz Ferdinand had survived his attacker in Sarajevo, would the world have gone to war in 1914?
