Ramallah, West Bank – When Israeli-Palestinian peace talks move beyond today's summit in Washington, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will face a tough balancing act as even his allies at home push back against US and Israeli pressures.
Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed today to meet again in two weeks, most likely [...]

Jerusalem – As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas enter direct peace talks on Thursday, an intensifying battle for Jerusalem has rendered the conflict’s trickiest issue even more intractable.
A key flashpoint in this battle is Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly Arab neighborhood revered by religious Jews. While the number of new [...]

Lahore, Pakistan – A series of suicide bombings targeting Shiite religious processions in Lahore, Pakistan killed at least 25 people and injured up to 180 on Wednesday night, according to the city's administrative chief. It marks the first large-scale terror attack since flooding devastated Pakistan four weeks ago.
Though sectarian in nature, the attacks are [...]

Tel Aviv – As Middle Eastern leaders gathered in Washington to inaugurate a new round of Israeli-Palestinian talks, Hamas gunmen killed four Israeli settlers in their car outside the West Bank city of Hebron.
The attack appeared to be an attempt to spark violence that could undermine the peace negotiations and was a stark reminder [...]

Paris – A German central banker, who stirred controversy last week with disparaging remarks about Muslims living in Germany, is now being pressured to resign following his comment yesterday – widely perceived as anti-Semitic – that “all Jews share a certain gene.”
Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the left-leaning Social Democrats, a former finance minister [...]

Mexico City – Mexico officials announced late Monday that they captured Edgar Valdez Villarreal, or “La Barbie,” one of the country's most-wanted men. Authorities have described him as a powerful drug lord responsible for supplying the American market with cocaine.
The arrest handed Mexican President Felipe Calderón a badly needed victory just ahead of his [...]

Beijing – A bungled attack on a whistleblower famous for his exposés of fraud and pseudoscience has drawn fresh attention to the vexed issues of academic dishonesty and popular gullibility in China.
Fang Zhouzi, a popular science writer and blogger, was assaulted by two men as he walked to his Beijing home Sunday evening; one [...]

Cape Town, South Africa – During this summer's World Cup, Somerset Road in Cape Town was transformed into a South African oddity: a road without cars.
They called it the Fan Walk, 1.6 miles of asphalt connecting a public soccer viewing area downtown with the newly constructed Green Point Stadium. The path was mobbed with [...]

Dakar, Senegal – Suburban Point E, on whose cobblestone backstreets Senegalese-American R&B roué Akon passed his boyhood years, already has a mosque. Several, actually, each megaphoning prayer songs across balmy Ramadan soirées. So, locals wonder, why shouldn't downtown New York City get another mosque, too?
The question may seem trivial, coming from one of Africa's [...]

The International Grains Council on Thursday cut its forecast for global wheat output by 1.1 percent, primarily on the news that major grain exporter Russia has seen one-third of its crop wiped out by the worst drought in a century.
To prevent inflation and ensure supplies for Russian tables and livestock, the Russian government banned [...]