February 20, 2011

China's annual long march

Li Guangqiang rises early and pulls on his sharpest city clothes: dark jeans fashionably distressed, puffy down coat, black pouch slung over one shoulder. An outfit carefully chosen to announce: I am not a farmer or a villager. Not anymore.

January 16, 2011

Cultural Exchange: Jonathan Kos-Read is 'the token white guy' in Chinese cinema

The rich, arrogant foreigner comes to China for business, but he ends up falling in love with what the script invariably calls an "Oriental beauty."

December 6, 2008

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, 79, dies in Moscow

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, the iconic religious leader who restored the church from a post-Soviet shell to an institution of privilege and power, died at his Moscow home Friday. He was 79.

2:27 PM PDT, September 24, 2010

Japan releases Chinese fishing captain

Japan released the Chinese fishing boat captain Saturday whose detention after straying into disputed waters had enraged Beijing and sparked the worst diplomatic crisis between the long-contentious neighbors in years.

January 18, 2009

Russian champion of Siberia's Lake Baikal has tough fight

There are days when renowned Russian ecological crusader Marina Rikhvanova feels like an endangered species.

September 4, 2008

Russian nationalist advocates Eurasian alliance against the U.S.

Writer, political activist and father figure for contemporary Russian nationalism, Aleksandr Dugin is the founder of Russia's International Eurasian Movement and a popular theorist among Russia's hard-line elite. He envisions a strategic bloc comprising the former Soviet Union and the Middle East to rival the U.S.-dominated Atlantic alliance. The Times interviewed Dugin this week at his Moscow office, a room draped with flags bearing the slogan "Pax Russica." The following are excerpts.

July 2, 2004

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ

Zarqawi Took Familiar Route Into Terrorism

The town that would give Abu Musab Zarqawi his notorious moniker is a hard place -- treeless and tough, cinder-block apartment houses punctuated by drab mosques. They say you have to be a thug to make it in the streets here, and the young Zarqawi had all the credentials: He ran with a fast crowd, fought easily and covered his skin with tattoos.

August 4, 2008

DISPATCH FROM KOZENKI

Russians in need of an energy adjustment turn to the pyramid

You can see it for miles, looming over the birch forests and wildflower fields and construction sites crammed with future dachas for Russia's rich and ruthless. Stabbing up toward heaven from its hilltop perch, the pyramid gleams white under the blast of northern sun. Twelve stories high, 55 tons of fiberglass, swarming with Russians desperate to rearrange their energy fields and cure their karma.

April 12, 2008

COLUMN ONE

Research monkeys languish in a state of limbo

They languish in the yard of a war-crushed research center, rattling against the rusting metal of their cages and staring down at the distant blue smudge of the Black Sea.

2:23 PM PST, November 11, 2004

Arafat's Body Arrives in Cairo for Funeral

A jet carrying the coffin of Yasser Arafat arrived in Cairo today, hours after the Palestinian leader died at a French hospital from an undisclosed ailment.

December 18, 2007

Russian nuclear fuel lands in Iran

After years of delay, Russia announced Monday that it had delivered its first shipment of nuclear fuel to a reactor in southern Iran, a move Washington had long tried to delay to pressure Tehran not to pursue its own enrichment program.

June 6, 2007

COLUMN ONE

From the archives: In Saudi Arabia, a view from behind the veil

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — THE hem of my heavy Islamic cloak trailed over floors that glistened like ice. I walked faster, my eyes fixed on a familiar, green icon. I hadn't seen a Starbucks in months, but there it was, tucked into a corner of a fancy shopping mall in the Saudi capital. After all those bitter little cups of sludgy Arabic coffee, here at last was an improbable snippet of home — caffeinated, comforting, American.

December 6, 2007

Iran's supporters pleased, skeptical

With a sense of vindication and a touch of suspicion, Iran's embattled defenders absorbed the news this week: U.S. intelligence services no longer believe the Islamic Republic has an active nuclear weapons program.

February 6, 2006

THE WORLD

Beirut Rioters Attack Church

BEIRUT — Thousands of Muslims rioted in downtown Beirut on Sunday, setting fire to the Danish Consulate, attacking a prominent Maronite Catholic church and smashing car and shop windows in protest against the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in Western newspapers.

January 8, 2008

COLUMN ONE

From the depths of Moscow

The old woman's back was so hunched she couldn't get her chin off her chest. Wrapped in layers of ratty sweaters, she stood meekly against a tile wall, one hand extended. Elderly Russians are everywhere in the subway tunnels beneath Moscow, begging for pocket change. Still, looking at her, I felt a stab of melancholy.