Carrie Battan
The plume of ash from volcanic activity in Iceland is delaying flights once again—and creating an opportunity for one of the world's biggest discount airlines to undercut its main competition. Air travel seemed to return to normal for a couple of weeks after the initial shock wave created by the ... Read More
Vice President Joseph Biden is overseas buttering up the Europeans, partially as means of damage control after Obama wounded their egos by canceling a summit with Spain earlier this year. But his real focus? Trying to get Europe on board with a system for tracking terrorist finances. Biden ... Read More
With the increasingly bleak fate of Roman Polanski in the hands of the Swiss, the Oscar-winning director has broken a long bout of silence over his potential extradition to the US. His statement, which reeks of last-ditch desperation, feels like too little, too late. From the statement: "I ... Read More
Do you ever feel like you're having intense déjà vu each time your eye catches a big news story on Greece's financial problems? It's probably because you've been reading the same headlines for the last four months. Last week, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner verbally prodded his European ... Read More
A Congolese accountant, Bienvenu Mbutu, has unearthed longstanding controversy over the highly popular Adventures of Tintin comic strip series in his demand that one of its books be banned in author Hergé’s home country, Belgium. Were Hergé alive today, he might be on board with Mbutu’s requests ... Read More
One man's ash cloud—material from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption—is another man's Cloud Nine. And the latter is a photographer. When the volcano in Iceland first began to wreak havoc across Europe, it was difficult to find high quality photos of the cloud. Photographers have since seized the ... Read More
Spain wants the EU to implement overarching legal protections for domestic violence victims, but the European Commission isn’t having it, reports EUobserver. Since the 2004 election of self-described feminist and “anti-machismo” Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain has placed itself ... Read More
Like any normal employees under enormous pressure, members of a British governmental committee cracked a few condom and abortion jokes to lighten the mood in the days before Benedict XVI’s planned papal visit. But the satirical wisecracks unintentionally leaked, and Britain is now scrambling to ... Read More
It might soon be hard to find a discounted Louis Vuitton bag on eBay, thanks to a ruling made by the European Commission this week. The new regulations, which come into effect in June, allow brands more control over how and by whom their products can be sold online. At the request of high-end ... Read More
I wrote last week about a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the EU that was canceled as a result of the ash cloud hovering over miles and miles of European airspace. The end of the airspace disaster is nigh, but the effects of the eruption are still being felt. Here's a rundown of how the ... Read More
The volcanic eruption that's cleared more airspace than did the attacks of September 11th saved the EU from having to formally confront the Pope's homophobia today. EU parliament President Jerzy Buzek was scheduled to meet with Pope Benedict XVI in Rome today, according to EUobserver, but his trip ... Read More
A study came out of Tel Aviv University this week reporting that the number of anti-Semitic incidents worldwide doubled in 2009 from the previous year, with the biggest spikes in the UK and France. Operation Cast Lead has been cited as the major source of the increase, but the report also points a ... Read More
When Polish President Lech Kacynski and 95 others were killed in a plane crash on Saturday, they were en route to the 70th anniversary commemoration of the Katyn massacre—the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by Soviet secret police. The massacre has been a primary cause of a huge rift ... Read More
How do you convince a group of politicians to halt their plans to construct a massive four-lane highway through prime ecological territory? In Europe, get them drunk. At least, that’s what might happen on Sunday when politicians and wine critics meet in Berlin for a "protest wine-tasting ... Read More
A month after the Internet exploded with false rumors of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni’s infidelities, the French police are launching an investigation to seek out the bloggers (or microbloggers, as the case may be) who planted the false seeds. But the investigation ... Read More
The European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights is probably the foremost unifying document of the bloc’s 500 million residents. But the decision to transform it into a performance piece is ultimately goofy and divisive. In the hopes of making its colorless language a bit more animated and ... Read More
This eye-catching BBC headline, "Condoms can help on poverty -- Catholic leader" tricks us into thinking that the Catholic leader of England and Wales has come out in support of some forms of contraception. But really, the Archbishop -- and the Catholic Church -- couldn't be further away from ... Read More
After a series of snubs, Europe is suddenly getting a bunch of positive attention from the US. What happened? Maybe Washington is impressed that, after a prolonged struggle to deal with Greece’s debt problems, the European Union was finally able to reach an agreement that made everyone happy ... Read More
The European media is facing the same successive waves of newsroom layoffs and pay cuts as we are on this side of the pond– but a quickly shrinking pool of reporters in Brussels, the European Union’s de facto capital, is due in part to an effort to keep the actions of EU institutions transparent ... Read More
What kind of international political influence would the United States have if Barack Obama’s most notable characteristic were his love of haikus? Probably not very much. For the European Union, a bloc in constant struggle to gain international clout, this is an actual problem – the only thing ... Read More
About Carrie Battan
