A pro-Putin rally. Photo AP
One round or two? For all the protests against Vladimir Putin, that has long been the only real question surrounding Russia’s presidential election, now just 10 days away. Will he get more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first round on March 4, with or without a little “massaging”, or will he be forced into a run-off with another candidate three weeks later?
Marie Colvin spent much of her career as a journalist telling the stories of ordinary people whose lives had been devastated by war. But her death in Homs today, may actually do more to bring home the horrors of the Syrian conflict to a western audience, than the thousands of reports that have been filed on the suffering of ordinary Syrian civilians.
The heroic war correspondent is a staple character in western films – and somebody that western audiences easily identify with. Colvin, who was killed alongside Remi Ochlik, an award-winning French photographer, certainly fitted the mould. She had bravely covered conflicts all over the globe.
Among political types, Rick Santorum has often jokingly been compared to Ned Flanders – that pious but kindly neighbour of The Simpsons who makes hot cocoa for Bart. On Tuesday the Drudge Report dug up (or was handed) the audio from a speech Mr Santorum delivered in Florida four years ago, which puts that comparison into the shade. It would be hard to imagine Ned Flanders talking quite so apocalyptically.
In his address, which is worth hearing in full, Mr Santorum said Satan was winning his war to take over America’s institutions. Having worked his way through American academia, which was “the first to fall”, the devil used the “domino effect” to topple “mainline Protestantism”, then “popular culture” and now “politics and government” in America.
After the latest Greek bail-out, there is a great deal of focus on whether the new deal is economically or financially-sustainable. The FT’s story on the leaked “downside scenario” report suggests that even those putting the deal together have severe doubts about whether it will stick.
But it is not just economic sustainability that matters. There is also the question of whether the deal is politically sustainable? What if the voters simply reject the deal?
Josefina Vázquez Mota. Photo AP
Women currently govern some 40 per cent of Latin America’s population. If Josefina Vázquez Mota wins Mexico’s presidential elections in July, that figure will rise to 60 per cent. “I will be Mexico’s first presidenta (female president),” Ms Vázquez said this month after she won the primary of the conservative National Action Party.
Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the eurozone crisis.
After more than 13 hours of talks, a second bail-out for Greece was agreed early on Tuesday morning. We’ll be bringing you reaction to the deal throughout the day. All times are GMT. By John Aglionby, Leyla Boulton and Tom Burgis on the news desk in London.
We’re going to wrap up now since, after getting no sleep last night, diplomats and officials across the eurozone appear to be heading home while Athens remains abuzz with how it will meet its side of the second Greek bail-out. To recap today’s highlights:
By Gideon Rachman
The question of whether a war will break out over Iran’s nuclear programme has been around for so long that it is easy to become almost blasé. In 2006 Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was already asserting dramatically: “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany.”
Photo: Getty
Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the eurozone crisis.
By Esther Bintliff and John Aglionby in London and Anjli Raval in New York, with contributions from correspondents around the world. All times GMT.
It was decision day on the Greek bail-out. After so many twists to this saga here is a round-up of what came out of the meeting of eurozone finance ministers after more than 13 hours of talks, courtesy of Peter Spiegel and Alex Barker of the FT’s Brussels bureau.
By Shawn Donnan, FT World News Editor
Anthony Shadid (C) as he interviews residents of Cairo's impoverished Imbaba neighborhood, during the Egyptian revolution. AFP PHOTO/ED OU FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Middle East and its conflicts have generated plenty of great works of journalism. However, the reporting produced by Anthony Shadid, the New York Times correspondent who died on assignment in Syria on Thursday, was exceptional.
While many others have found a calling in grand analysis of the region’s geopolitics, his was in the often heartwrenching stories of its people.
For more than a decade, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner gave the Middle East’s citizens a compelling voice in a western media often more prone to stereotype and cliché.
Further uncertainty in Greece and Chinese princeling Bo Xilai under pressure
This week Gideon Rachman discusses with Peter Spiegel, FT’s Brussels bureau chief, whether time really has run out for Greece. He also talks to Jamil Anderlini, FT’s Beijing bureau chief, about Bo Xilai, the Chinese princeling who recently suffered a severe blow to his chances of becoming a member of the Communist party leadership.
Produced by Amie Tsang and Serena Tarling
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