Word: britons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...photo op of Hamas leaders with a free and smiling Briton--BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, released after 114 days of Gaza captivity--is, among other things, a huge publicity coup for Hamas and its leader, Ismail Haniyeh. It allows the embattled Haniyeh to show he can deliver positive results in his new role as the top authority in the Gaza Strip and to say, with some legitimacy, that he can bring stability back to Gaza's lawless streets...
...Correspondent Alan Johnston was released on Wednesday after 114 days in captivity because the Hamas authorities in Gaza made his kidnappers an offer they couldn't refuse: either they freed the Briton or they would be hunted down and killed, a senior Hamas militant told TIME. To Johnston's captors, the Army of Islam, an offshoot of a powerful criminal clan in Gaza known as the Dogmush, there was no doubting Hamas' resolve. In the 48 hours prior to the journalist's release, Hamas gunmen took up positions on rooftops around the Dogmush compound in Gaza City, cut off water...
...immigrant's story of hungry hearts and divided loyalties is delivered with uncommon honesty and understanding in Sarfraz Manzoor's Greetings from Bury Park. But what gives the memoir its special kick is that the Pakistani-born Briton, now 35, manages to stake out his own life, more hopeful than his parents', not by becoming an assimilated Englishman, nor by turning to radical Islam, but by becoming, of all things, a Springsteenite. In the songs of the Catholic Bruce Springsteen, from New Jersey, the keema aloo-loving boy in working-class England finds a way to grasp his parents' dreams...
...wake of the 9/11 attacks, Manzoor gives up a bit on America and its hopefulness, as his hero (on his album of reconciliation, The Rising) seldom does. But by then Manzoor has already showed us how to live as something more than just a Briton, a Muslim or a Pakistani. At a concert in New Jersey once, an American fan, taking him for a terrorist, challenges Manzoor to name his favorite Springsteen songs. As he starts to reel off the numbers that speak to him - one after another - the clash of civilizations suddenly begins to sound remote...
...after the Communists overthrew Chiang Kai-shek in 1949 and gained power in China. He went on to serve as general manager for Shell, the only multinational oil company to stay on after Mao Tse-tung's triumph. When he died of cancer in 1957, Shell brought in a Briton as its new manager and hired Nien Cheng as his special adviser. In 1966, the year in which Mao launched the frenzied upheaval known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the company decided to pull out. Cheng was still remarkably prosperous. ''In this city of 10 million,'' she writes, ''only...