AMMAN: During my recent trip to Washington, I had the pleasure of meeting President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and numerous other members of Congress. Our meetings recognize 60 years of American-Jordanian partnership. During these decades, American support has helped us address some of our most vital development challenges, expand our trade horizons, and create …

US film director Roman Polanski broke his silence Sunday over the bid to extradite him to face child sex charges, saying the case was based on a lie and accusing authorities of wanting his head on a plate. In a 900-word statement, Polanski said that he asked "only to be treated fairly like anyone else" …

Unlike some of Haiti’s painters, it took Raymond Beauduy two months to return to work after January’s quake. He needed to time to think about what had happened, and he needed a roof over his head. Beauduy, who like many in Haiti’s art scene paints in the Naive style, using bright colors and seemingly simplistic …

DAMASCUS: Damascus’s oldest cafe, the Havana, used to be packed with customers whiling away the hours sipping coffee and puffing on a water pipe, but today it is three-quarters empty. Like so many other places in the world, Syria has been hit by a ban on smoking in public places. Smoking nargiles, or water pipes, …

WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA: After decades of bad news, at least three major trends are turning Africa’s way: agricultural policies, rural demography, and farm productivity all promise improved opportunities for farm families across the continent. These trends move too slowly to make headlines, but cumulatively they offer a whole new world of bigger payoffs from public …

ANKARA: Turkish and Syrian soldiers will hold joint drills this week to enhance border security cooperation, the Turkish general staff said Monday. The announcement came as yet another sign of the flourishing ties between the two neighbors, came to the brink of war in the late 1990s after decades of hostility. The three-day exercises, starting …

CAIRO: “I affirm my commitment to the integrity of these elections,” President Hosni Mubarak said at his first televised speech since undergoing surgery in Germany last month. The address was broadcast hours after state television showed him attending a ceremony at a war memorial in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. Mubarak stressed his commitment …

RAFAH: Egyptian police arrested an Israeli dirt biker who illegally crossed the border on Saturday, a security official said. The 36-year-old man, who led police on a chase after he crossed into the Sinai Peninsula, told them he entered Egypt by mistake after he was separated from his fellow bikers. Last month, Egyptian police detained …

CAIRO: In the halls of the United Nation’s New York bureau, officials have been considering a proposal to unify the UN’s many organizations promoting women’s equality and rights into a single “gender entity”. This entity would have a greatly increased budget — exactly how much is still being debated — and would be headed by …

Photography is a particularly strong medium when explored properly. Alas, it’s been fairly difficult to find a photography exhibition in Cairo without cliché and tired ideas. The recent exhibited works have been somewhat pasty: either too abstract to incite interest or too obvious to sustain attention. A wonderful interruption to the pallor of today’s photography …