A royal birth followed immediately by an amnesty for more than a dozen death-row prisoners, among others, is being interpreted in Morocco as a signal that the country is on the verge of making history in the Arab world by being the first to abolish the death penalty.
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/ 31 October 2006
Visitors to Morocco have often been tempted by pictures with the proverbial palm tree somewhere in the frame. But fewer and fewer of these trees are now around, and at this rate of decline the visitors of the future might not find any at all. The picture is changing; it is now of the Sahara desert advancing into once-green stretches.