Media Center

I’ve been in China for the last week. It’s always instructive to see how the world looks from the Middle Kingdom. Sometimes the best insights come from just reading the local papers. On March 25, The China Daily published an essay detailing how “Beijing authorities” had “launched inspection tours of kindergartens this week to ensure that children are not overburdened with schoolwork. Although Chinese, mathematics and English are supposed to be taught to primary school students, it is not uncommon to see pre-school-age children across China being forced to study these subjects.” The essay went on to explain why it wasn’t healthy to “begin preparing for the college entrance exam” in preschool.

The Arab world’s poorest and most misunderstood country has been facing multiple crises for years: a shortage of oil and water, a rapidly growing population, hunger, dictatorship, corruption, an international terrorist presence and deep internal regional and political differences. Now escalating regional rivalry between neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Iran has sparked a wider war that threatens chaos and possible collapse.

It was a desperate and chilling scene in central Baghdad on Saturday, fathers and mothers holding up pictures of their missing sons, demanding answers and searching for their boys.

In the new edition of its magazine, ISIS floats the idea of a truce. Is the group flagging—or is this just another tactic?

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) explained about his invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress:

There is an old saying that you don’t negotiate with your friends; you negotiate with your enemies. It is very unfortunate that the United States and Iran are enemies, but they are and have been since 1979. As such, it is imperative that we negotiate with them. Former Vice President Dick Cheney famously said that we “don’t negotiate with evil, we defeat it.” Such statements are political slogans, not useful strategies to resolve differences between nations.

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) snuff films are going viral, and the group’s barbarity has drawn recruits in the West at the same time that it has galvanized support for democratic governments to take action to stop them. In the United States, the threat of terrorism remains a top public concern almost 15 years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. National security is becoming a central issue for 2016 campaigns.

American warplanes have begun bombing the Islamic State-held Iraqi city of Tikrit in order to bail out the embattled, stalled ground campaign launched by Baghdad and Tehran two weeks ago. This operation, billed as “revenge” for the Islamic State (IS) massacre of 1,700 Shiite soldiers at Camp Speicher last June, was launched without any consultation with Washington and was...

As negotiators from the United States, Iran, and other nations race to meet the deadline — originally set for today — for a comprehensive framework agreement regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranian regime’s exploitation of the negotiations becomes clearer by the day. 

The Islamic State took its headline-grabbing show to the world stage last week as IS-inspired militants launched near-simultaneous attacks against the Bardo Museum, a popular tourist destination in Tunis, and Shite mosques in Sanaa. The Sanaa attack, the first by Islamic State militants in Yemen, was followed up by a second attack by an IS-affiliated group, Lions of Lahi, against police in...