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It was said during the presidential campaign that closing the Guantanamo detention center was one of the things the new president could do to immediately change the view of the U.S. role in the world for the better. After his election victory, President Obama immediately signed an executive order to do just that (I think […]

Yesterday, the Czech Republic hosted a joint EU-China summit that was originally scheduled for December.  The meeting was delayed then because of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting with the Dalai Lama.  This time, China made clear to tell the EU to stay out of its internal business.  2 main topics were on the agenda: the […]

In a move that went widely unreported last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a plan that would allow additional drilling within state waters in an attempt to help ease California’s fiscal troubles. California had banned new exploration activity within state waters (an area that roughly extends nine miles from the coast) since the 1969 […]

FBI Director Robert Mueller told U.S. lawmakers Wednesday that the threat posed by harboring terrorist at U.S. detention facilities was a threat on par with that posed by high-ranking gang leaders. “The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalizing others,” Mueller […]

The meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is now history, and it appears that both leaders gained something from the meeting. President Obama secured assurances from the Israeli leader that new peace talks will begin soon and Prime Minister Netanyahu won a timetable for progress on dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. Despite […]

There are few photos of the Iraq war as poignant and iconic as that of Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller. The photo, known as the “Marlboro Marine”, was taken by Los Angeles Times photojournalist Luis Sinco. The war-weary Marine with a cigarette dangling from his mouth in  the battle of Fallujah in 2004 is […]

Moody’s reports that, since the onset of the crisis, Latin American and Caribbean sovereigns sustained negative rating actions in only 5 out of 27 cases, versus 12 out of 21 in Eastern Europe. Similar trends can be found at the other major rating agencies (S&P and Fitch).

The U.S. Senate voted on Monday to confirm President Obama’s nominee for Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Margaret Hamburg.  The FDA is the oversight agency for food production as well as prescription drugs and medical devices. Dr. Hamburg is a Harvard-trained doctor and former New York City health commissioner known for […]

This article by Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, appears in the May 2009 issue of Scientific American magazine. In his analysis, Brown argues that causal factors such as the current world order, water shortages, eroding soil, and rising global temperatures are threatening not only the global food supply, but world civilization as […]

On the eastern edge of Georgia and stretching up along the Caspian sea, the troubled Republic of Dagestan has been largely forgotten.  Escalating poverty, hopelessness, and the militant Islamic Shariat Jamaat is driving many of its youth into extremism.  Mixed in the fray are ordinary Salafis who are being targeted as extremists.  These individuals, easily spotted by […]

According to the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO),  Director-General Pascal Lamy, International trade helps solve food crisis, and had not been part of the problem for the increased food insecurity of the last year and the increased level of poverty. “To suggest that less trade, and greater self-sufficiency, are the solutions to food […]

Nuclear-arms talks between the United States and Russia get underway today in Moscow. The negotiating teams are discussing a replacement for the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) that expires in December. Talks will address stronger verification procedures and might also tackle the issue of reducing both deployed warheads and stockpiles held in reserve. […]