History Readings

Five years ago today, Greece’s then Prime Minister, George Papandreou, disclosed to the world that his country was in severe fiscal difficulties. Recessions dipped and then double dipped, while debt soared. Unemployment rates, especially among young people, hit record highs in many parts of eurozone. Growth plummeted, and in many parts of the continent has yet to recover.

One constant throughout the eurozone crisis has been Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. Since Merkel took office in 2005, there have been 54 different leaders atop eurozone member countries - an average of more than three per country.

None of the eurozone’s current leaders has held office as long as Germany’s chancellor.

Bei der Parlamentswahl in der Ukraine ist Präsident Poroschenko zuversichtlich Zustimmung für seinen prowestlichen Kurs zu erhalten. Noch am Wahltag wirbt er für seine EU-freundliche Politik.

„Ich habe für die Zukunft gestimmt, für eine europäische Entwicklung und für eine Erneuerung der Staatsmacht“

Wegen des Ausfalls der Wahl im Osten des Landes und auf der Krim werden in der neuen Rada nur 423 Mandate der eigentlich 450 Sitze vergeben. Die zentrale Wahlkommission sprach von einem ruhigen Ablauf des Urnengangs. Mehr als 85.000 Einsatzkräfte von Polizei und Armee sorgten landesweit für die Sicherheit.

ntikenhandel war lange ein Gentlemen’s Agreement mit Handschlag und ohne allzu ernste Provenienzforschung; das ändert sich jetzt ein wenig, das Bundeskulturministerium will den illegalen Handel per Gesetz bekämpfen, Experten fordern für jedes angebotene Werk den Nachweis einer Grabungserlaubnis, Inventarnummern und Exportgenehmigungen, eine neue EU-Verordnung verbietet den Handel von allen historischen und archäologischen Kulturgütern aus Syrien, die rechtswidrig ausgeführt wurden - bizarrerweise gilt eine Ausnahme für diejenigen Antiken, die nachweislich vor dem 9. Mai 2011 aus Syrien ausgeführt wurden, eine Ausnahme, über die sich die Freunde und Kunden der großen syrischen Straßenbauer sehr freuen werden.

“Since World War II, very little that could be called genuinely humanitarian has resulted from American military intervention—not in Korea, certainly not in Vietnam, and not in Panama, Afghanistan, or the two Iraq wars and Libya.”

Since World War II, very little that could be called genuinely humanitarian has resulted from American military intervention—not in Korea, certainly not in Vietnam, and not in Panama, Afghanistan, or the two Iraq wars and Libya. The only wars of rescue that might have been conceived on moral grounds—Grenada and Kosovo—were so badly tainted by U.S. deception that the liberal interventionists don’t even talk about them anymore. The American medical students in Grenada were in no real danger after the communist coup, and the Serbs weren’t committing “genocide” against the Albanians in Kosovo.

’ve been consistent in my criticism of the president since even before he was first elected. But I don’t think that he’s ignorant, or even a fantasist like Reagan. Mr. Obama surely knows that America cannot defeat a religious ideology with missiles or soldiers, any more than we could defeat the Vietcong and Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnamese troops with massive aerial bombing and more than 500,000 ground troops.

The United States has moved to ease jitters among conservative South Koreans by agreeing to delay the return of wartime control of the South Korean military to Seoul until its forces are better prepared to deter North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats or fight it in a war.

The American military had been scheduled to vacate 653 acres of prime real estate in Yongsan by 2016, relocating most of its personnel there to a new base being built south of Seoul. If the main command post stays on, it will significantly reduce the size of land to be vacated, complicating the city’s plan to build a badly needed municipal park in Yongsan.

Rather than setting a new target date for the transfer, the allies will now “focus on South Korea achieving critical defensive capabilities against an intensifying North Korean threat,” according to statements from both sides. The allies will negotiate details of the new transfer plan by next fall, they said.

In June the leader of Islamic State declared the creation of a caliphate stretching across parts of Syria and Iraq - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named himself the caliph or leader. Edward Stourton examines the historical parallels and asks what is a caliphate, and what is its appeal?

The last caliphate - that of the Ottomans - was officially abolished 90 years ago this spring. Yet in a 2006 Gallup survey of Muslims living in Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan, two-thirds of respondents said they supported the goal of "unifying all Islamic countries" into a new caliphate

"Seventy years after the Prophet's death, this Muslim world stretched from Spain and Morocco right the way to Central Asia and to the southern bits of Pakistan, so a huge empire that was all… under the control of a single Muslim leader," says historian Prof Hugh Kennedy. "And it's this Muslim unity, the extent of Muslim sovereignty, that people above all look back to."

Sweden spent the past week trying, unsuccessfully, to find a foreign submarine thought to be lurking in its waters. But on Friday, having scoured the coast, the Swedish military called off the search. So what's going on in the Baltic?

What it means is that they've been searching among the islands and skerries off Stockholm for a submarine that shouldn't be there, bringing back dormant memories of the Cold War. Back in the 1970s and 80s Sweden regularly scoured its territorial waters for Soviet subs, almost always without success.

Once a a nuclear-armed whiskey-class submarine ran aground near a Swedish naval base, causing a diplomatic incident that became known inevitably as Whiskey on the Rocks. Fast forward to today, and a time when countries around the Baltic Sea are casting nervous glances towards a newly assertive Russia

The bedroom of a World War One soldier, killed on the battlefield almost a century ago, has been kept virtually untouched by successive owners of the house up to the present day.

This small, sunny room, at the end of a sloping wood corridor, captures the moment in a young man's life just before he died; still surrounded by the memorabilia of childhood, yet already fighting - and dying - in a war.

His parents, grieving for their only son, kept his room almost exactly as he had left it. Their only addition was a small bottle of soil from the Belgian field where he died. Successive custodians of this intimate museum have kept the tradition and, almost a century after Hubert was killed, his personal possessions are still laid out on his desk: two guns, two knives, and an opium pipe.

The last UK base in Afghanistan has been handed over to the control of Afghan security forces, ending British combat operations in the country.

The number of deaths of British troops throughout the conflict stands at 453. The death toll among US military personnel stands at 2,349.

Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Fallon accepted the Taliban had not been defeated, but said Afghan forces were now taking "full responsibilities".

Uruguay's election of a new president to succeed Jose Mujica, who is barred from running for a second consecutive term, goes to run-off, exit polls say.

If no candidate obtains the 50.1% needed to avoid a second round, Uruguayans will choose between the two leading candidates on 30 November.

Mr Mujica remains popular after leading Uruguay through economy growth and wage rises, but he is barred by the constitution from running for a second consecutive term.

Left-leaning Dilma Rousseff has been re-elected president of Brazil, after securing 51.45% of votes in a closely-fought election.

Ms Rousseff, in power since 2010, is popular with poor Brazilians because of her government's welfare polic

Her re-election for a second term extends the rule of Ms Rousseff's Workers Party (PT), which has been in power for 12 years.

And in New York City, a man wielding a hatchet attacks four police officers in Queens, slashing one in the head and another in the arm.

The series of episodes over just the last four weeks is raising new fears about the capacity of the extremists who call themselves the Islamic State

“the ISIS guys are just really energized,” Mr. McCants said, using an alternate name for the group, the Islamic State.

What appeared to be a turning point was in fact the start of a downward spiral for Mr. Foley, a 40-year-old journalist, that ended in August when he was forced to his knees somewhere in the bald hills of Syria and beheaded as a camera rolled.

Mr. Foley converted to Islam soon after his capture and adopted the name Abu Hamza, Mr. Bontinck said. (His conversion was confirmed by three other recently released hostages, as well as by his former employer.)“I recited the Quran with him,” Mr. Bontinck said. “Most people would say, ‘Let’s convert so that we can get better treatment.’ But in his case, I think it was sincere.”

More than an hour later, they flagged a taxi for the 25-mile drive to Turkey. They never reached the border.The gunmen who sped up behind their taxi did not call themselves the Islamic State because the group did not yet exist on Nov. 22, 2012, the day the two men were grabbed.

t one point, their jailers arrived with a collection of orange jumpsuits.In a video, they lined up the French hostages in their brightly colored uniforms, mimicking those worn by prisoners at the United States’ facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.They also began waterboarding a select few, just as C.I.A. interrogators had treated Muslim prisoners at so-called black sites during the George W. Bush administration, former hostages and witnesses said.

Within this subset, the person who suffered the cruelest treatment, the former hostages said, was Mr. Foley. In addition to receiving prolonged beatings, he underwent mock executions and was repeatedly waterboarded.Meant to simulate drowning, the procedure can cause the victim to pass out. When one of the prisoners was hauled out, the others were relieved if he came back bloodied.

In a way, what one division of American soldiers and marines did there in June of 1918 is responsible for the carnage that took place to the east throughout the summer and fall that followed: Had they not attacked and taken those woods from the Germans, many historians believe, Germany would have won the war that month.

Plenty of others believe it, too. “If the Americans don’t stop the Germans at Belleau Wood, the Germans take Paris — the war is finished,” Jacques Krabal told me. Mr. Krabal is the mayor of Château-Thierry; every day, as he walks about the city, he can see, looming over it from the heights above town, the massive American monument built a decade later to commemorate Belleau Wood and the battles that followed it that summer.

In the spring of 1918, the Germans launched a series of offensives in France designed to win the war before too many more American troops could get there. The first two were exceedingly successful; the third was, too, until a fledgling American force pushed back at Château-Thierry. The Germans instead took up positions behind formidable defenses in nearby Belleau Wood — only about 40 miles from Paris, the closest they’d gotten since 1914. The French were panicked: As their roads clogged with terrified refugees, Allied commanders confided to one another that the war was lost, and drew up plans to abandon the French capital. Their only hope was to drive the Germans out of Belleau Wood somehow, but French commanders dreaded the prospect of such an assault. So they asked General John J. Pershing to do it.

“It happens like that,” says a somber narrator. “The police can’t get there in time. How you defend yourself is up to you. It’s your choice. But Mary Landrieu voted to take away your gun rights. Vote like your safety depends on it. Defend your freedom. Defeat Mary Landrieu.”

Two years after the Sandy Hook tragedy, the top gun-control priority in the United States is still background checks. There is nothing controversial about the idea that people who buy guns should be screened to make sure they don’t have a criminal record or serious mental illness. Americans favor it by huge majorities. Even gun owners support it. Yet we’re still struggling with it.

The N.R.A.’s vision of the world is purposefully dark and utterly irrational. It’s been running a series of what it regards as positive ads, which are so grim they do suggest that it’s time to grab a rifle and head for the bunker. In one, a mournful-looking woman asks whether there’s still anything worth fighting for in “a world that demands we submit, succumb, and believe in nothing.” It is, she continues, a world full of “cowards who pretend they don’t notice the elderly man fall ...”

The United Nations Organisation has been formally inaugurated during a short ceremony at the US State Department in Washington.

The world security organisation aims to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" and maintain international peace and security.

The name "United Nations" was coined by US President Franklin D Roosevelt, and was first used in the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942 when representatives of 26 nations pledged to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers.

During the 1960s, the US and the Soviet Union competed for supremacy in space. But there was another contestant in the race - the Lebanese Rocket Society, a science club from a university in Beirut and the subject of a recently released film.

Manoug Manougian's boast may sound unlikely, but 50 years ago he and a group of students found themselves as space pioneers of the Arab world. Despite a shoestring budget, they developed a rocket capable of reaching the edge of space.

Everything for the project had to be built from scratch. Prototype rockets were made from cardboard and bits of pipe, and were tested on a farm in the mountains above Beirut.

In 1988, just as the Soviet army was preparing to pull out of Afghanistan, a rocket blasted off carrying the first and only Afghan to travel into space. Abdulahad Momand returned to earth a hero - but within three years he was forced to flee the country.

He was selected from more than 400 candidates to be the first Afghan to join the Soviet space programme, and moved at the age of 29 to the Cosmonauts' Training Centre in Star City, outside Moscow.

Both of them had need of their sense of humour as they made the return journey to Earth - and the computer systems on the Soyuz space-craft malfunctioned. They came within seconds of losing their engines and being trapped in space forever.