Regions

The latest Afghanistan and Iraq cost analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) will not sit well with many Americans living on a tight budget. Though the war in Iraq is costing less and less, the US military is basically transferring these saved funds to the Afghan conflict. Between 2009 and 2010, the average monthly cost […]

On September 4, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Deputy Secretary David J. Hayes wrapped up a three-day trip to Alaska. The two officials met with locals, Inupiat Eskimos, and representatives from the oil industry to discuss both oil drilling and environmental conservation on the North Slope and in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. […]

An American star not only coaches the Russian national basketball team but also praises the USSR’s controversial 1972 victory over his own country, while Putin claims to be modeling himself on America’s greatest president:  After a century of representing humanity’s thesis and antithesis, are the two powers merging into one another in a cute form […]

India’s Home Minister P. Chidambaram during a speech at the conference of State police chiefs and Inspector-Generals of police cautioned against the emerging phenomenon of ‘saffron terror’. The Home Minister’s comments have proved controversial with the Opposition Party, Bharatiya Janata Dal (BJP) demanding an apology. Semantics apart, Home Minister Chidambaram’s comment was not frivolous.  [Photo: […]

President Calderón’s PAN party is in a tough spot. Drug violence dominates media headlines, with many Mexican newspapers publishing extended obits of victims. For the most part, Mexico’s president explains the surging violence as proof-positive that the government’s crackdown is working. Regardless, many Mexicans care more about jobs and the economy than the drug gangs. […]

Mozambique’s government has reversed the increase in the price of bread, a decision that directly led to deadly riots in that country last week. It is the right course of action. But it does raise the question: Did officials really not foresee problems with unilaterally raising the price of an essential commodity? We’ll forget for […]

The court case in which the Rally for Democracy Party-led (RDP) opposition coalition is challenging the presidential and parliamentary election results held on November 27 and 28 last year has been sent back to the High Court which struck the case from the court roll on technical merits in March this year. The ruling gives […]

It seems that Evilastus Karonda’s re-election as the Secretary General of Namibia’s largest trade union federation at its fifth Congress which ended on Sunday September 5 in the capital Windhoek is a victory for the Namibian workers. Apparently, Karonda’s championship of bread and butter issues affecting the workers earned him enmity among his colleagues in […]

In recent days and weeks Fidel Castro has reappeared everywhere in Cuba—on television, on the radio, in the news—but he has made it, too, into international exchanges again. Ever the clever statesman, he is proving once more that he knows what to say and when to say it to participate in the most relevant international […]

This week marks the Jewish new year and one of the most important holidays for Israelis and Jews around the world. In honor of the occasion, President Barack Obama recorded a nice note for Israelis and Jews, a large portion of which feel abandoned by the administration for the pressure placed on Israel to halt […]

Foreign Policy recently published its 2010 Failed States Index. Perhaps not surprisingly Africa on the whole does not do well. Of the bottom 20 slots,  Africa has twelve, including the dubious honor of a clean sweep of the worst five, as well as slots 21 through 23. That’s right — Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and […]

I’d written earlier about the stultifyingly small (perhaps still-born?) aid packages that have been flowing into Pakistan’s flooded regions. As a result of the widely acknowledged insufficient private donations, the U.N. has asked that its member states double their pledged humanitarian aid packages to Pakistan. To get your head around the latest news on private […]