LAST YEAR, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel warned: "Nobody should believe that another half-century of peace in Europe is a given. If the euro collapses, Europe collapses. That can't happen." But there is now a risk that the euro, the 10-year-old common European currency, might indeed collapse. The trigger could turn out to be last weekend's election in Greece. New Democracy and PASOK, the centre-right and centre-left parties th...

I wanted you to be the first to know. It has just been revealed by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy in the United States that I am on a very short list of journalists (eight in Western countries, and seven others in India, Pakistan and Arab countries) to whom Osama bin Laden wanted to send “special media material” on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. To what do I owe this ho...

President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has been having some fun with language recently. He has come up with a new name for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the party that has formed the government of South Sudan since it finally got its independence from Sudan last July.“Movement”, in Arabic, is “haraka”, but Bashir has started using the word “hashara” instead. “Hashara” means &ldq...

“My true adversary does not have a name, a face or a party,” said Francois Hollande, France’s next president. “He never puts forth his candidacy, but nevertheless he governs. My true adversary is the world of finance.” No other leader of a major power would dare say such a thing. If Hollande, who will be France’s first Socialist president in 17 years, simply defies “the markets”, they will...