A black belt and years of martial arts training do not guarantee survival on the streets. Some even say these skills may be absolutely useless in real-life combat situations.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a major speech to the US Congress Tuesday, nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, amid tough questions on Afghanistan and climate change

No more special relationships: Europe is wasting its "Obama Moment"Europe has the US president it wished for, but Barack Obama lacks the strong transatlantic partner he wants. As European Council on Foreign Relations analyst Nick Witney and Jeremy Shapiro from the Brookings Institution warn in ECFR's latest report, ‘Towards a post-American Europe: A Power Audit of EU-US Relations', national governments in the EU must shake off illusions about the transatlantic relationship if they want to avoid irrelevance on the global stage.

Adi Da Samraj's exhibition at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia (2007), Transcendental Realism, marks the first time his work is being shown to the public. The purpose of The World As Light is to provide an overview of his entire artistic oeuvre of the past forty years?accompanied by key statements he has made on his own art and on the artistic process in general. His art can be understood as an intensive investigation of the human condition?the condition of presumed existence as a ?self? in the midst of a world that is ?not-self?. Adi Da's art is meant to call into question the most basic presumptions of ordinary human life: the ?fact? of existing as an independent ?self?, the ?fact? of every ?self? being separate from every other ?self?, the ?fact? of the ?self? being separate from the world of ?everything else?. Indeed, Adi Da intends his art to communicate the profundity that is known when all presumptions of ?separateness? are relinquished.

In this epic spiritual poem, Sri Aurobindo reveals his vision of mankind's destiny within the universal evolution. He sets forth the optimistic view that life on earth has a purpose, and he places our travail within the context of this purpose: to participate in the evolution of consciousness that represents the secret thread behind life on Earth

Indian writer Tharoor's first novel--while more realistic, less magical (despite its allegorical roots), and more politically engaged than Rushdie's Midnight's Children--is a readable, often witty, and frequently wise story of 20th-century India. Taking the title of his book from one of the great Indian epics (The Mahabhatra, which literally means ""Great India in Sanskrit""), Tharoor has also ...