AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell President Barack Obama at a joint press conference with Senegalese President Macky Sall last month R ussian President Vladimir Putin wasn't kidding about cracking down on LGBT rights. On Sunday, four Dutch filmmakers were arrested under the country's new "gay propaganda" law. Signed by Putin on June 30 after passing unanimously in the State Duma, the measure bans both private and public expressions of support for gay rights deemed to be accessible to minors and prescribes fines of up to 100,000 rubles ($3,000) for violations. The filmmakers, who came to the country earlier this month to shoot a documentary about gay life in Murmansk, were taken into custody after police went through their footage and found an interview with a 17-year-old gay man (a minor under Russian law). While the foursome was fined for visa violations and let go, it is the first instance of the anti-gay law being enforced against visitors to the country. The gay blogosphere and...

Recent revelations that the U.S. government had been spying on European allies continue to rile public sentiment on the continent, just as officials from both sides of the Atlantic sit down for talks in Washington on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a wide-ranging deal that the Obama administration has been pushing as a key foreign policy initiative. If successful, TTIP would deepen the economic ties between North America and the European Union and represent the biggest trade deal in over two decades. But with public trust in the United States ebbing throughout the core countries of the European Union, President Obama will probably have to do more than simply downplay the scandal as a hyped-up, misunderstood policy detail. Old school Atlanticists have long touted the wisdom of deeper economic integration between the United States and the European Union, which is already vast and significant. U.S.-EU trade in goods and services totals about one trillion...

AP Photo/Khalil Hamra CAIRO, EGYPT—People started filing into Tahrir Square in the early afternoon on July 4, the first full day after President Mohamed Morsi was deposed by the Egyptian military. Though it was a tumultuous day—which saw new interim President Adli Mansour sworn in, the arrests of many Muslim Brotherhood leaders, and the mass migration of Cairo’s residents to the square which became synonymous with the Arab Spring’s ebullient upheaval—Cairo was calmer than many expected. Once again, most Egyptians were celebrating as one disliked leader exited the stage, while their country’s future remained deeply uncertain. Morsi and other top Muslim Brotherhood officials repeatedly called for peaceful resistance. Muslim Brotherhood members gathered on Thursday afternoon on Nahdet Masr, the boulevard leading to Cairo University, answering Morsi’s cri de coeur. Close to 70 protesters marched to an abutting road to demonstrate near traffic. A stiff military cordon met them as soldiers—...

GENEVA—Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, is a slight, Chinese woman prone to power shades of lipstick. At the World Health Assembly in Geneva, where ministers of health from the U.N.’s 194 member countries gathered to discuss the world’s most pressing illnesses, Chan’s lip-color ranged from a light rose to fire-engine red, but her attitude never swayed. As Hong Kong’s Director of Health during the 2003 bird flu outbreak, Chan became known for both her wry humor and whip-sharp demeanor. In the middle of that epidemic, she told the press, “I eat chicken every day, don’t panic everyone.” Outside, reluctant local officials were killing over 1.5 million chickens at her behest. At the World Health Assembly, held from May 20 to 28th, she introduced various ministers as “my brother,” and “my sister,” drawing both laughter and applause from the buttoned-down attendees. But Chan’s epidemic persona made a repeat performance at this year’s assembly as a recent...

AP Images/Ariel Schalit In an age-long past—we're talking about more than two years ago—the country to Israel's northeast was ruled by a stable but despotic regime. After the battering that it took in its 1973 war with Israel, Syria carefully kept the de facto border quiet. But the regime outsourced the conflict to proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas, so that the bloodletting between the countries never really stopped. Meanwhile the ruling Assad dynasty stockpiled missiles and poison gas. It would be hard to say that anyone in Israel is exactly nostalgic for those bad old days. Then again, it's hard to find anyone who expects better days ahead. The first thing that a local Syria-watcher or ex-general will tell you is that the Israeli government hasn't managed to decide what it wants to see happen in Syria. The second thing that she or he will say is that this doesn't really matter: Israel can't influence the outcome, and all the realistic possibilities look awful. Right now, even the...

S idney Rittenberg's face fills the screen in a college auditorium where The Revolutionary is being shown. His eyebrows are bold brushstrokes of white above narrowed, intent eyes. His lips are firm. He has the wrinkles and gnarled neck of an old man. He does not, however, look like a man who is 90 years old, or like one battered by spending 16 of those years in solitary confinement in China for the offense, ultimately, of believing too deeply in the Party and the revolution. "If you put one drop into the long river of human history, that's immortal ... You either make a difference or you don't make a difference," Rittenberg says to the camera in his Southern gentleman's drawl. This is his credo. Outside the auditorium windows, night has fallen. Rittenberg's larger-than-life face is reflected, translucent, in the glass, as if his memory were speaking out of the darkness. "History," he says wryly, "rolled right over me." The Revolutionary , recently released, is Sidney Rittenberg's...

AP Images/Gerald Herbert In February 2003, massive rallies were held worldwide— including one of some 200,000 people in Washington, DC—to protest the impending invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition. President George W. Bush’s response when asked whether the protests had influenced his thinking at all was to scoff at them, saying “It's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group.” It was standard Bush. The decider had decided. And he had his political mandate: Polls consistently showed that a majority of Americans supported the war . The views of the minority could therefore be dismissed. I was reminded of Bush’s dismissal of protesters’ opinions this weekend, when I read of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks on the protests that have engulfed his country over the past several days. Dismissing the protesters as “a bunch of looters” without a coherent message, Erdogan declared, “We will build a mosque in Taksim and we do not...