Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
World Oct 1, 2013
Syria foreign minister likens civil war to 9/11
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem on Monday pledged to cooperate with international inspectors charged with dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons program, but he vowed to crush a rebellion that he said has drawn strength from al-Qaida and other internationalist jihadists. Addressing a gathering of world ...
World | ANALYSIS Sep 30, 2013
Kenyan attack aids president's stature, leeway
by Jean Marc Mojon
Until the Nairobi mall carnage, Uhuru Kenyatta was a beleaguered and divisive president. But his own bereavement and new clothes as commander in chief have earned him fresh support — and, some say, a “get out of jail free card” for the International Criminal ...
World Sep 30, 2013
Nigerian gunmen kill students as they sleep
Suspected Islamic extremists attacked an agricultural college in the early hours of Sunday morning, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms, the school’s provost said — the latest violence in northeastern Nigeria’s ongoing Islamic uprising. The attack, blamed ...
World Sep 30, 2013
Mother identifies Nairobi morgue's last victim from mall
Karen Wambui walked slowly through the Nairobi city morgue’s turquoise and yellow iron gates, still trying to process what she had seen inside. She had just confirmed that the last body still there from the Westgate Mall attack nearly a week earlier was that ...
Politics & Diplomacy Sep 28, 2013
Singh tones down hopes for Pakistani premier talks
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday toned down expectations for a planned meeting with Pakistani Premier Nawaz Sharif on Sunday at the United Nations, saying Pakistan remains an “epicenter of terrorism.” Singh, making what will likely be a farewell visit to the White ...
World Sep 28, 2013
U.S. mom, daughters spotted but spared by attackers
A blast. Gunfire. Katherine Walton grabbed her three young daughters and dove to the mall’s tiled floor. Later, a terrorist gunman looked into Walton’s eyes but didn’t shoot. She and the girls, as Walton put it, were hiding in plain view, yet they weren’t ...
World Sep 28, 2013
Kenyan troops caused mall collapse: official
Kenya’s military caused three floors of the Westgate Mall to collapse during the deadly terrorist siege, a top-ranking official confirmed Friday, while the government urged patience with the pace of an investigation that has left key questions unanswered. Seven days after 67 people were ...
Crime Sep 27, 2013
Lawmaker charged over pro-Pyongyang attack plot
South Korean prosecutors indicted a leftwing lawmaker Thursday on charges that he was plotting a pro-North Korea rebellion to overthrow the government, saying his plan posed a “grave” national security threat. Former lawmaker Lee Seok-ki, from the small United Progressive Party, was arrested by ...
World Sep 26, 2013
Warlord behind Kenya attack has global ambitions
by Sudarsan Raghavan
The alleged Somali mastermind of the assault on a posh mall that killed scores and jolted Kenya is a man of contradictions. Ahmed Godane is bookish, eloquent in both Arabic and Somali, recites poetry and is known to quote from obscure academic journals, analysts ...
Asia Pacific Sep 26, 2013
Send books, not guns, Malala implores at U.N.
With a maturity and poise that belied her tender years, Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen shot by the Taliban for championing girls’ education, stood by world leaders and called for books, not guns.
World Sep 26, 2013
FBI agents start work to identify the victims
Working near bodies crushed by rubble in a bullet-scarred, scorched mall, FBI agents began fingerprint, DNA and ballistic analysis Wednesday to help determine the identities and nationalities of victims and al-Shabab gunmen who attacked the shopping center, killing more than 60 people. A gaping ...
World | ANALYSIS Sep 26, 2013
Malls add security after Kenya strike
Some malls around the world have been scrambling to add security guards to look for suspicious people following a deadly attack on a shopping center in Nairobi over the weekend. But for other malls, it has been business as usual.