IHT Rendezvous: Environmental Warning Fatigue Sets in

Record levels of industrial smog? A dwindling number of fish in the world’s oceans? A 4° Celsius warming in global temperatures by the end of the century?How about environmental warning fatigue?Global concern for major environmental issues is at an all time low, according to the results of a global poll of more than 22,000 people in 22 countries, released earlier this week.“Scientists report that...

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British By-Election Shows New Support for Rightist Party

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives took a harsh pummeling on Friday with a by-election result that showed surging support for the United Kingdom Independence Party, a right-wing group whose deep inroads into the Conservative vote, if sustained at a general election in two years’ time, could oust the Conservative government and usher the Labour Party back into 10 Downing Street....

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 28

NEWS Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, 52, the top contender to succeed the Castros in Cuba, will need to display the authority of a future president while acting as if he does not want the job. Damien Cave reports from Mexico City.In the waning hours of his troubled tenure, tens of thousands of believers gathered in St. Peter’s Square for Pope Benedict XVI’s valedictory address. Daniel J. Wakin reports...

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Iran and Six Nations Agree to Continue Nuclear Talks

Pool photo byThe European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, at the start of the talks. ALMATY, Kazakhstan – Two days of talks between six world powers and Iran over its nuclear program ended on Wednesday with specific agreement for further meetings in March and April over a proposal that would sharply constrain Iran’s stockpile of the most dangerous...

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British Media to Challenge Secrecy Bid in Litvinenko Case

The British Broadcasting Corporation said it and other news organizations would oppose an effort on Tuesday by the British government to limit information disclosed to the planned inquest into the death of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former officer in the KGB who died of radiation poisoning in London more than six years ago. The BBC reported that the government had planned to apply for a so-called...

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India Ink: Laliji, the Octogenarian from Bihar

Why do millions of people, from entire Indian villages to urbane middle managers to foreign tourists, brave the crowds at the Kumbh Mela? During this year’s 55-day pilgrimage, to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, an estimated 100 million Hindus and others are expected to take a holy dip in the Ganges River to wash away their sins. India Ink interviewed some of them.Laliji, 80, from Chhapra, Bihar, was one...

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IHT Rendezvous: Opera for an Era When Money Is Tight

VIENNA—Not long ago it looked as if cuts in arts funding would sound the death knell of the Vienna Chamber Opera, known in German as the Kammeroper, an ensemble esteemed for its chamber-scale productions in an intimate, inviting setting. The Austrian federal government’s decision to eliminate entirely its support, which constituted half of the company’s governmental subsidies (the other half coming...

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India Ink: In Hyderabad, Anger and Frustration

Srinivas Mahesh, 28, was snacking outside his hostel near the Konark Theater in Dishknagar, his usual hangout in Hyderabad, when he heard a loud explosion Thursday evening. Not long after, he saw smoke filling up the air. Once he realized it was a bomb blast, instead of rushing back to his hostel he resolved to helping the injured.“I saw disfigured bodies for the first time in my life,” he said. He...

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Car Bomb In Syrian Capital Kills At Least 31, Opposition Says

Sana/European Pressphoto AgencyAn injured man was carried near the site of a car bomb explosion in Damascus on Thursday. In renewed violence reaching the center of the Syrian capital, a car bomb exploded in Damascus on Thursday near the headquarters of President Bashar al-Assad’s ruling party, killing more than two dozen people, mainly civilians but also some security forces, according to opposition...

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China Says Army Is Not Behind Attacks in Report

SHANGHAI — A day after a United States security company accused a People’s Liberation Army unit in Shanghai of engaging in cyberwarfare against American corporations, organizations and government agencies, China’s defense ministry issued a strong denial and insisted that the report was flawed. At a news conference in Beijing Wednesday, the ministry suggested the allegations were destructive...

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India Ink: A Conversation With: Journalist and Author Rahul Pandita

Rahul Pandita, an associate editor with the Open magazine in Delhi, is a journalist and author who belongs to the Kashmiri Pandit community, Hindus who had to flee the Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s during a separatist insurgency by the Muslim majority.In his memoir, “Our Moon has Blood Clots,” which was released last month, Mr. Pandita chronicles the loss and suffering of his own family to narrate...

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IHT Rendezvous: Holding Obama's Feet to the Climate-Change Fire

At first glance, it was hard to tell whether they had come to bury Obama or to praise him.Thousands of activists from hundreds of environmental, social justice and community groups marched on Washington yesterday in the biggest climate rally ever held in the U.S. capital. Activists both called on President Obama to make good on his climate change policy promises and protested the Keystone XL pipeline...

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IHT Rendezvous: In Singapore's Immigration Debate, Sign of Asia's Slipping Middle Class?

BEIJING — Immigration is a hot-button issue nearly everywhere in the world, though the contours of the debate vary from place to place. In the United States, sweeping changes to the law may offer legal residency for millions of people who have entered the country illegally, my colleague Ashley Parker reports.In Singapore, the debate looks somewhat different: The government plans to increase the population...

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IHT Rendezvous: How Much Do You Trust Journalists?

LONDON — Another poll came out this week showing that in the hierarchy of trust, journalists figure near the bottom of the heap.Some of us take a perverse pride in being down there with the money-changers and the harlots (actually, the latter sometimes rate rather highly in these surveys.)The comforting theory is that if everybody hates us, we must be doing something right.The Ipsos MORI poll published...

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Meteorite Fragments Are Said to Rain Down on Siberia; 500 Injuries Reported

MOSCOW — Bright objects, apparently debris from a meteorite, streaked through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, accompanied by a boom that damaged buildings across a vast area of territory. Around 500 people were reported to have been injured, most from breaking glass. Emergency officials had reported no deaths by Friday afternoon but said that 14 people had been hospitalized. ...

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Britain Says Equine Drug May Have Entered Food Chain

LONDON — A crisis over horse meat in European food products deepened Thursday when British officials said tests showed that a powerful equine drug, potentially harmful to human health, may have entered the food chain in small quantities. Until now, the crisis had been seen primarily as an issue of fraud after products containing horse meat were labeled beef, with politicians insisting that,...

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IHT Rendezvous: Mario Draghi Takes the E.C.B.'s Message to Spain

MADRID—The European Central Bank and its president, Mario Draghi, want to ensure that their voices get heard beyond the financial district of Frankfurt.But their efforts to travel around Europe and spread their message more directly to its citizens have ended up backfiring, at least when it comes to visiting Spain, one of the countries at the center of the Continent’s debt crisis.Last May, the E.C.B....

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The Female Factor: Dancing on Behalf of a Billion

LONDON — Anyone who happens to be passing through Westminster at 11 o’clock on Valentine’s Day may — if things go as planned — catch an unusual glimpse of a few members of Parliament gathered somewhere in the shadow of Big Ben, dancing along the footpath. The actress Thandie Newton will be leading members of the public and a few politicians in a flash mob dance on Thursday to mark the One...

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IHT Rendezvous: Is Europe's New Budget Really 20 Percent Green? Opinions Differ.

The European Union’s proposed budget for 2014-20, fiercely negotiated in Brussels until Friday, is smaller than its predecessors — a first for a European budget and the surest sign that Continent-wide austerity has seeped into one of the most important documents of the union.Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, insists that there is another guiding principle to the new Multiannual...

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IHT Rendezvous: Meditations on the F1 Season to Come - and on 20 Seasons Run

PARIS — The 2013 Formula One season has not really begun. The first race takes place March 17 in Melbourne. But with the launches of the new cars and the first four days of test sessions ending Friday, the seeds have been planted. What kind of plant will grow is not easy to figure out.I have been observing from the sidelines for a couple of weeks, watching the fanfare of the car launches — or rather,...

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