International Glance
MThe four laptop computers that former U.S. spy contractor Edward Snowden carried with him to Hong Kong and Moscow were a "diversion" and contained no secrets, according to an ex-CIA official who met with Snowden in Russia this week.
The classified documents that Snowden had downloaded from the U.S. National Security Agency were stored on smaller devices, such as hard drives and thumb drives, and they have not been turned over to the Russian or Chinese authorities, said Ray McGovern, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst.
RUSSIAN lawmakers will in February debate a bill that could see homosexual couples lose custody of their children, parliamentary documents showed Wednesday.
Egypt’s military-backed government forged ahead with a sweeping political crackdown against Islamists on Wednesday, even as the United States prepared to curtail some of the nonessential military aid it gives to the Arab world’s largest state.
Even as the United States presses for the rapid destruction of chemical weapons in Syria, a dispute lingers over unexploded chemical munitions that U.S. soldiers left on a Panamanian island more than 60 years ago.
Six workers at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant have been doused in radioactive water, its operator says. The incident happened after a worker removed a pipe connected to a water treatment system at the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said.
Israel's policies in West Bank areas under its control prevent the Palestinian economy from flourishing, a World Bank report says.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has said there will never be peace with the Palestinians until they recognise Israel as a Jewish state, and has dismissed Israel's military occupation of Palestinian land and the growth of Israeli settlements as the root cause of the conflict.
