PYEONGCHANG, KOREA — North Korea’s participation in the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Olympics drew thunderous applause from crowds at the games and a flurry of press coverage hailing the unfolding diplomatic process between Seoul and Pyongyang.
FORT MYERS, FLORIDA — Shortly before midnight on September 3, 1944, an African-American sharecropper named Recy Taylor was walking home from church with two companions in Abbeville, Alabama when the women noticed a green Chevy sedan drive past four times before finally rattling to a stop just a few feet ahead.
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Out of a total of 13 prime ministers that served since Israel was established in 1948, Benjamin Netanyahu is the fifth who has been accused of corruption.
In the second part of this MPN exclusive, we examine the U.S. military’s latest intervention in Asia, its 120 years of imperialist domination in the Philippines, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s half-hearted push for independence from Washington. We speak to exiled Filipino revolutionary Jose Maria Sison and Professors William I. Robinson and Roland Simbulan.
GAZA (Analysis) — Near the end of last month, Haaretz reported that, according to an expert hydrologist, 97 percent of Gaza’s drinking water has been contaminated by sewage and salt.
BEIJING — Wall Street is bracing for a potential shake-up as China is set to launch its first-ever crude oil futures contract late March at the Shanghai Futures Exchange.
The move, which had been laid out in 2012 but faced delays over possible market turbulence, could represent a bold step forward in China’s rise as an economic superpower and global hegemon. The contracts will be priced in China’s currency, the renminbi or yuan, marking the birth of what many are calling the “petroyuan.”
WASHINGTON – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed a meeting of the National Sheriff’s Association on February 12 in Washington. As the nation’s chief law enforcer, Sessions was “among friends” and such an appearance should have been uneventful. What could possibly go wrong? Well … it appears that the Attorney General may have improvised a bit in his speech, straying away from the prepared remarks he was supposed to have given.
BEIJING (Analysis) — The recent economic “correction” in the U.S. markets, which saw stocks drop back down from recent record-highs, has begun to spread to the east, reaching the stock exchanges in Tokyo, Taiwan and Shanghai.
GOLAN HEIGHTS – Soon after Saturday’s dangerous escalation involving Syria’s downing of an Israeli fighter jet in its airspace seemed to fizzle out, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israel was approaching the de-escalation period as a time to prepare for large-scale war with its northern neighbor by boosting its air defenses.
Though its ostensible purpose is to fund the U.S. military over a one year period, the National Defense Authorization Act, better known as the NDAA, has had numerous provisions tucked into it over the years that have targeted American civil liberties.
