December 2014

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The Big Chill: Tensions in the Arctic

Picture: Royal Navy Media Archive/flickr Conn Hallinan - One hundred and sixty-eight years ago this past July, two British warships - HMS Erebus and HMS Terror - sailed north into Baffin Bay, bound on a mission to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. It would be the last that the 19th-century world would see of Sir John Franklin and his 128 crew members. But the Arctic that swallowed the 1845 Franklin expedition is disappearing, its vast ice sheets thinning, its frozen straits thawing. And once...

Final Blow to Arab Spring? All Charges Dropped Against Egypt's Mubarak

Picture: Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak courtesy Wikipedia John Queally - In yet another blow to the Egyptian revolutionaries whose hopes have been repeatedly dashed since the protests they initiated in 2011 swept former autocratic ruler Hosni Mubarak from power, a court on Saturday dropped all the remaining criminal charges, including allegations of murder, that had been levied against the nation's former president. Al-Jazeera America reports: An Egyptian court has thrown out charges against former President Hosni Mubarak, his interior minister, and six...