Global News Blog

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (c.) tours local housing during a visit to the Russian city of Elista Tuesday. A video leaked on Wednesday shows Mr. Putin shouting and cursing at his cabinet – a deviation from his usual, cool public persona. (Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Pool/Reuters)

Not so KGB cool: Putin blows top at his cabinet in new video

By Fred Weir, Correspondent / 04.17.13

Vladimir Putin usually appears to be the cool, poker-faced tough guy the KGB once trained him to be. But a somewhat different persona is on display in a video clip leaked by a Russian news agency Wednesday.

The edited video, taken at a meeting with Russian cabinet ministers and regional leaders after journalists had been ordered to switch off their cameras, shows Mr. Putin chewing out and cursing at officials for their failure to implement his presidential election promises.

"How are we working? The quality of work is extremely low," Putin told them. "If we're going to work like that then we'll achieve [nothing]."

He then threatened to sack them all.

"If we don’t do this, we will have to admit that either I’m not working effectively, or you all are working badly and you all should leave," Putin said. "I want to draw your attention to the fact that today I am leaning towards the second option."

Putin, whose locked-down lifestyle is so secretive that his wife is rarely seen in public and no one even knows where his two grown-up daughters live, seldom lets the public see his emotional side. But recently he did permit himself a flash of televised anger over delays and cost-overruns in the preparations for next year's Sochi Winter Games – to which he has staked his personal prestige and authorized expenditures of more than $50 billion.

The video of Putin lambasting his officials was published Wednesday on Lifenews.ru, an online tabloid that's usually Kremlin-friendly, leading some pundits to suggest that Putin may have actually wanted this outburst to be made public as well.

But Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists that the Kremlin was furious over the leak.

"What was published from the closed part of the meeting is outrageous and unacceptable from an ethical point of view," Mr. Peskov said. "We plan in the near future to make contact with the leadership of the publication, to ask for an explanation."

The Putin who is usually seen on tightly controlled Russian TV is calm,  magisterial, adventurous, likes to schmooze with celebrities, and is deeply concerned about the fates of endangered birds and animals.

Issues such as his opulent lifestyle – he enjoys the use of 20 lavish official residences, compared with just eight for the entire British royal family – and his habitual tardiness for almost any meeting are almost never touched upon in the Russian media.

Nor, at least until recently, were his occasional flashes of temper.

The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side after running aground in the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Jan. 2012. (Gregorio Borgia/AP/File)

After shipwreck, Costa Concordia gets the musical treatment

By Nick Squires, Correspondent / 04.17.13

It was one of the most dramatic maritime disasters in modern times, but the Costa Concordia tragedy has now inspired a Bollywood-style musical.

In an initiative that may seem insensitive to some, an Indian film company will start shooting the movie in Italy over the next few weeks.

The film has no name yet, but it will be loosely based on the plight of the Costa Concordia, the luxury cruise ship which partially sank after ploughing into rocks off the tiny island of Giglio in January 2012.

Thirty-two people lost their lives in the accident, including a 5-year-old girl.

Basing an all-singing, all-dancing film on the tragedy may see ghoulish, but those behind the movie insist it will be done tastefully.

“It will be only loosely based on the sinking of the Costa Concordia," says Stefania Ippoliti of the Tuscan Film Commission, which is helping with the project. "It’s about a group of people who are stranded on an island after a shipwreck. It will be very light in tone, nothing like the actual disaster. It’s going to be a romantic comedy, not a tragedy.”

Location scouts are expected to arrive soon, with filming to start at the end of May or in early June.

It will be filmed somewhere in the Tuscan archipelago of islands – not on Giglio itself, because of local sensitivities and the fact that the island has in effect become a giant naval shipyard, as a multi-national team of engineers works to refloat the wreck of the Concordia and tow it off to be scrapped on the Italian mainland.

Location scouts will instead look at some of the other islands in the archipelago – possibly nearby Elba, where Napoleon was sent into exile, or tiny Capraia and Pianosa.

The film is to be made by Sri Mishri Productions, a company based in Chennai in the southern Indian province of Tamil Nadu.

It won’t in fact, be a “Bollywood” movie because that denotes movies made in Hindi by the film industry based in Mumbai, the city once known as Bombay.

Instead it is part of a Tamil language genre of movies known as “Kollywood," a nickname that combines Hollywood and Kodambakkam, a neighborhood in Chennai.

Perhaps surprisingly, the concept of Kollywood-meets-the-Concordia has been welcomed by at least one survivor.

Benji Smith, an American who was on his honeymoon on the Concordia when it went down, thinks it is a “wonderful” idea.

“As long as the story is told well, I think each storyteller should choose the narrative structure and medium that communicates most clearly with their audience,” he says.

Mr. Smith, a computer scientist from Boston, is himself a storyteller – he wrote a book about the sinking of the cruise liner in which he described how he and his new wife, classical musician Emily Lau, thought they were going to die on the night of the accident.

The book, "Abandoned Ship: An Intimate Account of the Costa Concordia Shipwreck," was self-published in January, just days before the one-year anniversary of the tragedy.

Preliminary hearings are currently taking place in a court in Grosseto, Tuscany, for the former captain of the ship, Francesco Schettino, who is expected to be sent to trial on charges of abandoning ship and manslaughter.

The coffin of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, draped in the Union Flag, is carried on a gun carriage drawn by the King's Troop Royal Artillery during her funeral procession in London today. (David Crump/Pool/Reuters)

Britain bids farewell to Thatcher's funeral, debates her controversial legacy

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent / 04.17.13

With the funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher today, Britain concludes more than a week of commemoration for the controversial leader, who died April 8.

Thousands gathered in central London to witness the solemn procession of Mrs. Thatcher’s casket to St. Paul’s Cathedral, where 2,300 mourners packed into the historic church to pay tribute to the country’s first female prime minister. Among them were Queen Elizabeth II and a slate of conservative heavyweights, including former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the last white president of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk. 

A “storm of conflicting opinions centers on the Mrs. Thatcher who became a symbolic figure – even an ‘ism,’” said London Bishop Richard Chartres in an address at the ceremony. “Today the remains of the real Margaret Hilda Thatcher are here at her funeral service. Lying here, she is one of us, subject to the common destiny of all human beings.”

If Thatcher’s decline and death were ordinary, however, her life was anything but. And though the contents of her legacy have been the subject of raucous debate over the last week, few dispute a central fact: her impact on Britain was colossal.

“Here we are – more than 20 years after she was in office, a third of a century after she became prime minister – and talking about her role in our lives,” Oxford historian Robert Saunders told the Monitor last week.

As that piece noted,

The country she left behind when forced from office in 1990 was very different from the one she inherited when her Conservative party won power on the back of the so-called Winter of Discontent in 1979.

Rejecting the political consensus politics of postwar Britain, she ushered in a more combative era based on tighter monetarist policies, privatization of inefficient nationalized industries, individual shareholding, and a curbing of the power of trade unions, which had dominated politics. 

Indeed, if conservatives have historically been known for guarding the boundaries of the status quo, Thatcher blazed a new trail: the conservative-as-insurgent, with a wide vision for societal transformation. 

And the debate over what, exactly, that vision has meant for the modern world extends far beyond Britain proper. 

In Europe, for instance, Thatcher is often remembered for her hearty rejection of the European Commission’s desire to transform the European Parliament into the continent’s primary democratic institution. As she declared unequivocally in 1990, “No, no, no!”

But in many ways, experts noted to the Monitor, the current European Union falls in lockstep with Thatcher’s own vision – one in which the nation-state remained the primary base of both political power and identity.

Her legacy for Britain’s female politicians is equally mixed.

In 11 years as prime minister between 1979 and 1990, she failed to promote any women members of Parliament to her cabinet – the government's senior ministers – rejecting positive discrimination and complaining about a lack of talent in the female ranks….

However, while Mrs. Thatcher was reluctant to promote women when in the hot seat, she was not shy about promoting advantages of female leadership when she was seeking election. In 1975, when battling for the Tory leadership she famously said, "I've got a woman's ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it."

That tenacity earned her the begrudging respect of at least some feminists, but it won her few friends in Argentina, where she ordered war to protect the British-administered Falkland Islands in 1982, and Northern Ireland, which she insisted was “as British as Finchley,” referring to her home district in London.

Even Thatcher’s funeral itself was a flashpoint in the controversy over Thatcher’s status, with critics noting its $15 million cost, borne by the public, and her supporters pushing for an even grander ceremony.

The debate mirrored Thatcher herself: controversial, forceful, and in the end, she mostly got her way.  

The coffin of British former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rests in the Crypt Chapel of St. Mary Undercroft beneath the Houses of Parliament in London on Tuesday. Mrs. Thatcher's funeral will be held at St. Paul's Cathedral on Wednesday. (Leon Neal/AP)

State funerals, ceremonial funerals, and Margaret Thatcher

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent / 04.16.13

Before dawn Monday morning, several hundred British soldiers gathered along the dark streets of central London to escort an empty casket to St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The somber early morning march was a dress rehearsal for the Wednesday funeral of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, an elaborate and expensive ceremony that has touched off new debate about how the country should eulogize one of its most divisive leaders.

Immediately following her death last Monday, supporters began to clamor for Mrs. Thatcher to be afforded a so-called state funeral: an elaborate ceremony generally reserved for the country’s monarchs. 

Thatcher wouldn’t have been the first modern prime minister afforded such an honor – Winston Churchill and the major prime ministers of the late 19th century all had them – but it would have been a ritzy departure from the ceremonies celebrating most of her predecessors.

Thatcher herself foresaw the controversy her memorial might inspire, however, and made clear before she died that she did not want a state funeral. So instead she will be commemorated Wednesday with a “ceremonial funeral” – one notch lower on the hierarchy of British official burials.

Here’s what you need to know about the Iron Lady's funeral. 

What is the difference between a ceremonial funeral and a full state funeral?

Practically speaking, almost nothing. Both state and ceremonial funerals are elaborate, expensive affairs (Thatcher's will cost an estimated 10 million pounds, or $15 million) involving a military procession and a funeral at one of London’s eminent old chapels. 

Thatcher’s casket will follow a winding route through central London – flanked by about 700 military personnel – beginning at the Palace of Westminster, continuing on to the Royal Air Force chapel, St. Clement Danes, and ending at St. Paul’s Cathedral. (You can see a minute-by-minute breakdown of the events here.)

It’s the same route followed by Winston Churchill’s casket in his state funeral, with a very similar supporting cast. So what gave Churchill’s ceremony the coveted “state” label? Two things.

First, the gun carriage containing Mr. Churchill’s coffin was drawn by Royal Navy sailors, while Thatcher’s will be drawn by horses.

Second, and perhaps more essentially, a state funeral requires parliamentary approval, while a ceremonial funeral requires only the consent of the monarch. Before her death, Thatcher nixed the idea of a state funeral for herself in large part because of the divisive debate its approval was likely to stir up in Parliament, the Guardian reported last week.

What prime ministers have had state funerals?

Britain’s only 20th century prime minister to receive the honor was Winston Churchill, buried January 31, 1965. The BBC described the elaborate pomp and circumstance of that day.

The procession took that most ancient road that runs from the Palace of Westminster to the steps of the cathedral of St Paul. It is a road that half the history of England seems to have taken, on its way to a crowning or to a public and ignoble death, to murder or be murdered, to raise revolt, to seek a fortune, or to be buried. The route was lined with young soldiers, their heads bowed over their automatic rifles in ceremonious grief. The bands played old and slow tunes. The drums were draped in black. The staffs of the drum-majors were veiled. They moved slowly, steadily, at a curiously inexorable pace, and it looked as if nothing could ever stop them. The great crowd watched with an eloquent and absolute silence.

Before Churchill, three other prime ministers received state funeral honors in modern times: the Duke of Wellington in 1852, Viscount Palmerston in 1865, and William Gladstone in 1898. But the practice largely fell out of service in the 20th century.

What about ceremonial funerals? How common are those?

They're often given to important royals and there have been two in the past decade and a half. Princess Diana had one when she died suddenly in a car crash in 1997, as did Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who died in 2002. Both of those ceremonies took place in Westminster Abbey.

So what kind of funerals do prime ministers usually have?

That's a matter of individual choice. Most have opted for a ceremony at Westminster Abbey. Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson had one in 1995, and Edward Heath in 2005.

But the family of Harold Macmillan, Conservative Party prime minister from 1957 to 1963, held a private funeral in January 1987 at a church in the village of Horsted Keynes where he often worshiped. Just 200 people – Thatcher among them – attended.

By any estimation, Thatcher’s sendoff will be a slightly more audacious affair. 

Flags in front of the John Hancock tower and the Fairmont Copley Hotel fly at half mast the day after two bombs exploded at the finish of the Boston Marathon, on April 16, in Boston, Massachusetts. The city is cordoned off around the bomb site and filled with law enforcement officials, federal and state. Officials are calling it a terrorist attack. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor)

Boston Marathon blasts: How the world is responding

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent / 04.16.13

The world was already watching Boston on Monday afternoon, when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the city’s annual marathon, touching off an outpouring of solidarity from around the world.

As Boston processed the attack that left three dead and more than 100 wounded, a steady flow of replies poured in from global leaders and observers, many of them no stranger to the horror of anonymous acts of terror on their own soil.

"Having suffered from terrorist attacks and civilian casualties for years, our people feel better the pain and suffering arising from such incidents," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement Tuesday, according to Agence France-Presse. His government, he said, denounced the attacks in the “strongest possible terms.” 

Meanwhile, Ramin Mehmanparast, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, called the bombings a “source of sorrow” for his country.

“No one should under any circumstances support terrorism and extremism, whether it be in the Middle East or the United States," he said, according to AFP.  

And writing of the attack in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Boston-based Israeli journalist Dina Kraft said yesterday felt eerily familiar because of her days reporting back home: sifting through facts and testimonies as smoke clears from a gruesome public bombing.

Boston “streets, usually crammed with rush-hour traffic, now emptied out as people heeded the state’s call to go home and out of the way of other possible bombs,” she wrote. “I thought back to covering attacks in Israel where the streets often fill after an attack, a blend of curiosity seekers and those who find it a good opportunity to gather for another hearty round of 'Death to the Arabs' chants.”

There were no such chants in Boston, and the lack of hysteria surrounding the tragedy impressed her, she said. But as her evening of interviewing survivors and eyewitnesses wore on, “a familiar dread and weariness began to settle in, one that I felt with every attack I covered while I lived in Israel.”

Meanwhile, newspapers around the world led their Tuesday front pages and homepages with the Boston bombing. Many described the experiences of locals who had been on the scene, underscoring the global scope of the marathon, which is the world's oldest. 

“They won’t win,” blared the headline of an editorial in the British tabloid The Sun. “Truly, we cannot relax. We can never assume that because we have had a period of calm, the bombers have gone away,” the paper wrote. “As ever, Britain will stand by America in her dark hour and offer all assistance to catch those responsible.”

As authorities searched for clues and culprits and social media lit up with support for Boston from all over the world, a small number of extremist groups expressed support for the bombings. 

"We believe in attacking US and its allies but we are not involved in this attack," Ihsanullah Ihsan, the top spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan told AFP. "We have no connection to this bombing but we will continue to target them wherever possible."

Somalia’s Al Shabaab mocked the victims on its official Twitter feed and used the attack as an opportunity to criticize US policy. “The ‪#BostonBombings are just a tiny fraction of what US soldiers inflict upon millions of innocent Muslims across the globe on a daily basis,” read one tweet.

Political as that sentiment was, it was joined by more levelheaded reminders that while the Boston attack was vicious and tragic, on a global scale it was hardly a unique experience.

American academic and pundit Juan Cole noted that bombings and other mass violence also killed dozens of civilians Monday in Syria and Iraq.

The world is stitched together, he wrote, by the common human experiences of sorrow and grief that follow such tragedies. 

“Having experienced the shock and grief of the Boston bombings, cannot we in the US empathize more with Iraqi victims and Syrian victims? Compassion for all is the only way to turn such tragedies toward positive energy,” he wrote. “Terrorism has no nation or religion. But likewise its victims are human beings, precious human beings, who must be the objects of compassion for us all.”

Who's really behind 'I'm in love with Margaret Thatcher'?

By Jason Walsh, Correspondent / 04.13.13

Two songs are battling to the top of the British music charts in memory of Margret Thatcher. One is, her supporters say, in bad taste, but the one adopted by fans of the late Conservative prime minister isn't quite what it seems, either.

Opponents of Thatcher have campaigned successfully to have "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead", a song from the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" composed by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, to reach the top spot Britain's official charts.

The response from Conservative Party supporters was swift, with newspapers including The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph demanding that the BBC refuse to play the song. The BBC has said it will play a five-second clip of the song along with a news item explaining why during its official chart rundown on Radio One, Sunday.

Equally irritated, though less outraged, Tories had another plan: counter Ding Dong with a song of their own. They chose the little-known 1979 punk number "I'm in Love with Margaret Thatcher" by the Notsensibles.

The British press loved it — and why not? It's a good story, in a silly sort of way: a bit of political argy-bargy in a fun and digestible package.

The media didn't exactly work hard to uncover the truth of the story, such as it is. A phone call to the band's former frontman, Michael Hargreaves, was all it took to discover that the campaign predated the Tories' adoption of it.

Hargreaves himself started the campaign with a Facebook page on Wednesday that soon garnered 8,000 likes. Surprisingly, though, by Friday it had been adopted by Conservative Party supporters as a counter to "Ding Dong." Facebook, Twitter and Tory blogs lit-up with requests that people buy the song in order to keep the anti-Thatcher song from reaching the top spot in the hit parade.

Former Conservative lawmaker Louise Mensch, now based in New York, was among those who urged her Twitter followers to buy the song twice: once from Amazon and once from Apple's iTunes.

Would Maggie be proud?

In some press interviews, Hargreaves has implied, rather unconvincingly, that he is a supporter of Mrs. Thatcher. But if the song is a hit, the royalty checks may represent some private enterprise Margaret Thatcher would approve of.

Hargreaves, an ex-punk rocker who now works with adults with learning disabilities, is an unlikely figure for adoption by Conservative Party members, though he did say "Ding Dong" was disrespectful. (Read a in-depth profile of Margaret Thatcher here.)

"My grandfather was [both] a Christian and a communist. I'm a fat, 50-year-old punk. You make your mind up about my political sensibilities," he says.

Hargreaves, who is due to perform with his old band on BBC television news in Manchester on Monday, says he doesn't really mind how high the song charts in the end, but that the experience has been fun. "We dunked a pebble in the lake and there seems to be a few ripples."

Eighty-five seconds of the song were previously featured in the 2011 biopic movie "The Iron Lady," starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher.

"I find it hilarious that Tories have adopted it," he says. "The song is a sort-of tribute and sort-of not."

The official chart will be announced on Sunday afternoon, but by today it had already reached No. 6 in the iTunes chart.

The Central Bank of Ireland's 10 euro coin, which incorrectly features an extra 'that' in the James Joyce quote it displays. (Central Bank of Ireland)

Irish bank forges in the smithy of its soul a botched James Joyce coin

By Jason Walsh, Correspondent / 04.12.13

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." - James Joyce, 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'

Red faces on the island of the green: A €10 coin minted to commemorate novelist James Joyce but misquoting his work will not be withdrawn, the Central Bank of Ireland has said.

He was one of Ireland's most renowned writers, and one of the few titans of modernism the country has ever produced, so it's no surprise that Ireland would seek to commemorate Mr. Joyce. It's a pity, then, that the launch of a commemorative €10 ($13) coin has been marred by a mistake.

Comedians may be inclined to ask if a €10 coin costing €46 ($60) is a sign of continuing turmoil in the eurozone. Or rather, they might have, if there wasn't an even easier target: The coin features an engraved misquote on its obverse.

The quote from Joyce's masterpiece "Ulysses," one of the key texts of 20th century modernist literature, should have read: “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read."

The script on the coin adds the extra word "that" to the second sentence, changing it to: "Signatures of all things that I am here to read."

The coin was designed in Ireland by Mary Gregoriy but minted by Mayer’s Mint in Germany, something that is itself a source of some mirth in the land of Joyce's birth, given widespread feeling the country has lost its economic sovereignty to Germany.

The design shows a stylized Joyce wearing his trademark spectacles with the words pouring in cursive script from his head.

Human error was blamed for the quotation mistake, with the Central Bank saying a staff member made a mistake copying the text.

Though the coin has sold out, the bank says a refund will be available to purchasers, who will be told of the misquote.

"While the error is regretted, it should be noted that the coin is an artistic representation of the author and text and not intended as a literal representation," the bank said in a statement.

Copyright expired on Joyce's work on Jan. 1, 2012. Prior to this his estate, run by his grandson Stephen Joyce, had fiercely guarded the writer's work, virtually forbidding all but the shortest quotations.

Irish-born novelist Gerry Feehily, now living in Paris, pours cold water on the cult of Joyce, not because he wasn't a great writer, but because his function today is quasi-political and at odds with history.

"Few people read Joyce, certainly they didn't at the time," he says.

According to Mr. Feehily, the error on the commemorative coin is doubly embarrassing given Ireland uses its literary figures as form of identity creation and tourism marketing.

"Ireland spends all its time talking up writers it hated. No Irish writer was ever accepted in their time. It's only through this conscious, revisionist reinvention of the Irish identity that we've decided to make something of Joyce, [Samuel] Beckett, and even poor old silly [Oscar] Wilde," he says.

Nonetheless, perhaps there is a certain poetry in the gaffe. Although the Joyce novel quoted on the coin, "Ulysses," is a difficult read, Joyce's last major work, "Finnegans Wake" (yes, there's no apostrophe) is famously close to unreadable, composed as it is of stream of consciousness, linguistic acrobatics, neologisms and, well, gibberish.

As Joyce himself wrote: "bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!”

Nonetheless, Antony Farrell, founder of publisher Lilliput Press in Dublin, says there is a serious side to the error.

"My editor, Danis Rose, who edited the definitive editions of 'Ulysses' and 'Finnegans Wake,' was in today and he found it risible. It's incredible that [the bank] didn't hire a Joyce consultant and that they haven't withdrawn it."

Mr. Farrell says while the lack of attention to detail may make the coin even more of a collector's item, it doesn't speak well of Ireland.

"Calling it artistic license, as people are, diminishes the idea that we value our culture – it's demeaning, frankly."

Pigeons surround Afghan men kneeling down for Friday payers near the Pul-e Khishti mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday. Taliban militants attacked an Afghan army outpost near the eastern border with Pakistan on Friday, killing over a dozen Afghan National Army soldiers, the Defense Ministry said. (Ahmad Jamshid/AP)

Deadly Taliban attack targets elite unit in Afghanistan

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent / 04.12.13

 A Taliban attack killed 13 Afghan soldiers Friday at a remote Army outpost in the eastern province of Kunar, underscoring the rising challenges that face the country’s Army as foreign troops withdraw over the coming year.

Some 200 Taliban fighters ambushed the soldiers around 5 a.m., attacking the outpost before setting it on fire, The New York Times reports. Every soldier present at the base was killed, making the attack was the deadliest in the region in six months, according to local officials.

The soldiers killed were members of the Army’s Third Battalion, one of only a small number of Afghan Army units rated as fully self-sufficient by the US military. They patrolled a mountainous district on the Pakistani border that serves as a major gateway for insurgents from that country. 

The attack is part of a rising tide of violence in the region as winter thaws, easing passage across the mountainous terrain.

“We know the enemy’s going to come out hard this summer, so the [casualty] numbers are going to go up,” Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the NATO-led military coalition, told the Times.

There has been a steady uptick in the number of Afghan soldiers and police officers killed in recent years as they have grown their ranks and gradually assumed greater responsibility from NATO forces.

In 2012, the Afghan government estimated that some 1,000 soldiers and 1,400 police officers were killed. By the end of the year, a military spokesman estimated that 110 soldiers and 200 policemen were dying every month, the Times reports.

By contrast, 32 NATO soldiers have been killed in the first three months of 2013, according to the monitoring group casualties. 

Currently about 100,000 international troops are based in Afghanistan, including 66,000 from the United States. That number is expected to drop by half by early 2014, with most of the remaining forces moving back into support and training positions. 

Within the next few months, Afghan forces are expected to be responsible for security across the entire country.

A contingent of Australian lawmakers visiting Afghanistan this week praised the “enormous progress” that Afghan security forces had made toward that goal. 

''The Afghan National Security Forces are bigger than the insurgency, they are significantly more capable, they are better war fighters and they are more well resourced,'' said Member of Parliament Wyatt Roy in an interview with an Australian news site.

But the unstable border between Afghanistan and Pakistan remains a major source of concern for Afghan security. As the Lebanese newspaper Naharnet reports:

The border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is a key battleground in the fight against the militants, many of whom use safe havens inside Pakistan to launch attacks against Afghan soldiers and the U.S.-led military coalition.

For years, leaders in Kabul and Islamabad have traded accusations of blame over the Islamist extremists who pose a threat to security in both countries and criss-cross the porous border with impunity….

[R]ebel bases in Pakistan infuriate Afghan President Hamid Karzai and remain a major obstacle to peace as U.S.-led troops prepare to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Workers install models in preparation for a real estate exhibition in Shanghai, China. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Good Reads: China's limits, competitive America, charitable giving, and New York childhoods

By David T. Cook, Staff writer / 04.12.13

China faces a “glass ceiling” in its efforts to become the predominant world power, argues Geoff Dyer in Foreign Policy.

Key constraints on China’s ascendency include suspicious and fast-growing neighbors combined with obstacles imposed by China’s state-controlled economic system, says Mr. Dyer. So even if China overtakes the United States and becomes the world’s largest economy – as some experts predict will happen within the next 10 years – the Asian giant will not dislodge Washington from its place as the world’s leading power for the foreseeable future, Dyer argues. 

China “is implementing plans which challenge U.S. military, economic, and even political supremacy. But on each front, the last few years have demonstrated China’s limitations, not the inevitability of its rise,” says Dyer, a former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times.  

One limit on China’s rise is that its assertiveness is generating suspicion among economically vibrant neighboring nations, including South Korea and Vietnam. “China’s strategic misfortune is to be bordered by robust and proud nation-states which expect their own stake in the modern world,” Dyer says.

As for China’s efforts to have its currency rival the dollar, “it can have an international currency that might challenge the U.S. dollar or it can keep its brand of state capitalism,” Dyer says. “But it cannot have both.”

The America that works

“Cheer up” is the advice from The Economist in its 14-page special report on American competitiveness.

True, there are worrisome developments on a variety of issues – innovation, energy policy, education, immigration, and infrastructure. “America’s politicians have been feckless,” the magazine concludes. “The combination of dysfunctional politics and empty coffers” is preventing Congress from dealing with many problems.

Still, the magazine comes away hopeful about the long-term prospects for the US economy: “The America That Works” is the title of the cover package. The optimism stems from what is happening out in the country, away from Washington. “[T]he main reason for cheer is that beyond the Beltway no one is waiting for the federal government to fix the economy. At the regional and local level America is already reforming and innovating vigorously,” The Economist reports, with the states serving as laboratories for experimentation.

Of course, political feuding in Washington imposes costs. “The United States could become far more competitive far more quickly if Congress punched its weight,” The Economist says, adding that so far “the politicians in Washington have not inflicted any crippling damage yet.”

Surprising facts about charitable giving

Just in time for tax season, The Atlantic serves up a fascinating look at charitable giving in the US.  

“One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income,” writes Ken Stern, author of a recent book on charities.  

The wealthiest Americans – those with earnings in the top 20 percent – gave on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity in 2011, the latest year for which statistics are available. By comparison, Americans with incomes in the bottom 20 percent donated 3.2 percent of their income.

Wealth helps determine the recipients of charity. The poor tend to give to religious organizations and social service charities like the Salvation Army, The Atlantic says. The wealthy tend to focus their giving on colleges and museums.

What you see around you also influences how much you give, Mr. Stern says. Wealthy people who live where most of their neighbors make $200,000 a year or more give less than those who live in more socioeconomically diverse surroundings and see people in need on a daily basis.  

A New York view of childhood

To celebrate its 45th anniversary, New York Magazine features a wide array of current and former city residents reminiscing about their childhoods in the city. It is an eclectic group ranging from comedian Whoopi Goldberg to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Some of the memories are specific to New York City, but many speak to the joys and sometimes painful lessons of childhood in general. Ms. Goldberg says of her mother that she “demanded that you tell the truth or be insanely creative about lying. It had to be a good story. If it was a terrible story, you ran the risk of really having her disappointed in your lack of imagination.”

Justice Scalia writes about a girl named Theresa, the object of his first crush, and also about his sixth-grade teacher, Consuela Goins. Of this lovingly remembered teacher Scalia observes, “Every cloud has a silver lining, and one of the benefits of the exclusion of women from most professions was that we had wonderful teachers, especially the women who today would probably be CEOs.”