The Foreign Desk
How many more people need to go missing in Sri Lanka?
Pattani Razeek is the head of an organisation called the Community Trust Fund, a non-profit organisastion in Sri Lanka that works to promote equality and protect human rights in a country where, to say the least, such niceties have been often overlooked as a result of a vicious civil war. Important work, you probably agree. [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Saturday, 20 February 2010 at 8:38 am
Do Muslims get a fair deal in India?
Last night I was in the audience for the filming of the of the latest of the Doha Debates, the series of discussions headed by Tim Sebastian and broadcast by BBC World News. Held within the quite solace of St Stephen's College, one of the most prestigious colleges within Delhi University, the debates were breaking [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 16 February 2010 at 6:24 am
Is this the last chapter of the Buffett story?
Are we entering the endgame for Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway?
It might seem a strange thing to ask, since the Oracle of Omaha has never seemed so wise, or so desperately important for our times. The core of his homespun investment strategy – don't invest in anything you don't understand – is just the anti-venom needed [...]
By Stephen Foley | The Foreign Desk | Saturday, 13 February 2010 at 9:54 pm
Constructive lobbying still the right approach for drug industry
It looks like the pharmaceutical industry has been tempted back on to a war footing, but it should tread cautiously. With plans for US healthcare reform becoming unstitched before our very eyes, the industry’s main lobby group appears to have decided that $100m it spent on ads in favour of Barack Obama’s shake-up was money [...]
By Stephen Foley | The Foreign Desk | Friday, 12 February 2010 at 9:26 pm
Profiling the people of Delhi one by one
So many people in this vast, sprawling, awful, remarkable city. So many crowds, so much pushing. You can never find any space, any quiet. Who are all these people, these housewives, these labourers, these office workers, these shop-owners. Where do they all come from? What's their story? The official 2001 census figure for the Indian capital [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Friday, 12 February 2010 at 7:45 am
Out for a duck – again
Without doubt the most humiliating, shameful experience for me since coming to the sub-continent happened on the field of sporting endeavour. Back in late 2008, a friend had asked whether I was able to help make up the numbers in what immediately sounded like a D-list Bollywood movie called World Cupp (there's a thing here [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Monday, 8 February 2010 at 3:01 pm
Football Association postpones anti-homophobia campaign
Football is again under fire after cancelling the premiere of a film intended to be launched at Wembley Stadium next week to counteract homophobia in the professional game.
Gay campaigner Peter Tatchell, of the protest group Outrage, has described the mothballing by the Football Association of the 90-second online film – made by advertising agency Ogilvy – as a [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Monday, 8 February 2010 at 11:21 am
Another defence of Ken Lewis
There ought to be a legal defence of crime passionnel for executives accused of fraud.
There’s a vast difference between the casual lies of mortgage brokers, the wilful negligence of mortgage lending firm bosses and the double-speak of mortgage derivate salesmen, and the other types of fraud that characterise the credit crisis. This second category, crimes [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Friday, 5 February 2010 at 10:51 pm
A mislaid sex toy, Partition and a splendid hotel
The Imperial Hotel in Delhi has seen many things over the years. Perhaps most famously, its cool, white-washed colonnades witnessed much of the drama surrounding the negotiations that led to the Partition of India. At the time, James Cameron, the stylish chronicler of South Asia, would later recall, "anyone who meant anything in Indian affairs [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Wednesday, 3 February 2010 at 6:46 am
The Audacity of Hope: Obama’s budget
If he hadn’t already put one book out with the title, the ten-year budget plan published by Barack Obama should have been called The Audacity of Hope.
It has taken a heroic set of assumptions about the sustainability and strength of the US economic recovery even to reach predictions for deficit reduction that look as modest [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 2 February 2010 at 12:04 am
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