DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- Its snow-capped peaks, crystal-clear lakes and pristine landscapes could put Tajikistan on par with pastoral hot spots in New Zealand or Switzerland. However, lingering Soviet-era paranoia and a dizzying array of as many as 11 permits required for travelers wishing to visit, set against a backdrop of a public infrastructure that could only kindly be called crumbling, make it unlikely that this Central Asian nation will be vying for the title of top tourist destination anytime soon.

UNITED NATIONS, New York -- A U.N.-sponsored summit last week on climate change laid the groundwork for further unified global action on limiting greenhouse gasses, but a separate meeting organized by the Bush administration in Washington rolled out an agenda that did little more than widen the gap between the United States and other countries. The meetings in New York and Washington, said diplomats in Europe and elsewhere, illustrated the stark reality of two differing positions on climate change.

JERUSALEM --  In Britain, the University and College Union has just announced it has to cancel plans to boycott all Israeli academics because the boycott would break anti-discrimination laws. The British government and academics around the world criticized the union's one-sided approach to the complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But who can blame Europeans for hating Israel, really? After all, when you look at the news they consume, it's clear that Israel is a country run by vicious and malevolent thugs.

In July 2005, in a telephone interview with a journalist for the Austrian weekly Profil, an Iranian exile to France, one "witness D," claimed that an officer of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had made an explosive revelation to him: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a member of the terror commando unit that in July 1989 shot to death the Iranian Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and two other Kurds in Vienna. World Politics Review here presents this interview for the first time in English.

ROME -- A design to create a unified party of the center-left in Italy risks undermining the very government it supports and is unlikely to appease Italians, who are increasingly disgruntled with the political status quo in their country. The new Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) will officially be born on Oct. 14, when Italians will choose the party's leadership and constituent assembly in nationwide primary elections. Still, the center-left's troubles could eventually lead to the return of Silvio Berlusconi.

It is difficult today to recall the anxiety that shook America when, fifty years ago, Sputnik pierced the atmosphere. "No event since Pearl Harbor set off such repercussions in public life," University of Pennsylvania historian Walter A. McDougall has observed. Sputnik was the starting gun for a desperate, urgent race between the United States and the Soviet Union for space superiority -- and the military advantages it might confer -- which would consume billions while leaving neither nation safer.