As Washington and its great power partnersprepare for more nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Obama administration and policy elites across the political spectrum talk as if America is basically in control of the situation. Sanctions, we are told, are inflicting ever-rising hardship on Iran’s economy. Either Tehran will surrender to U.S. demands that it stop […]
The Internet has sustained some pretty intense assaults in the past couple of years. There was the heavy-handed attempt to stamp out content piracy with SOPA/PIPA, the Federal Communications Commission’s Net neutrality ruling, which many saw assplitting the baby, and that whack job who claimed to own a patent on the World Wide Web. It is again open season […]
Euro zone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund clinched agreement on a new debt target for Greece on Monday in a breakthrough towards releasing an urgently needed tranche of loans to the near-bankrupt economy, officials said. After nearly 10 hours of talks at their third meeting on the issue in as many weeks, Greece’s international lenders […]
The euro zone economy is on course for its weakest quarter since the dark days of early 2009, according to business surveys that showed companies toiling against shrinking order books in November. Service sector firms like banks and hotels that comprise the bulk of the economy fared particularly badly this month, and laid off staff at a […]
Barack Obama became the first American president to visit Myanmar on Monday, using a six-hour trip to balance U.S. praise for the government’s progress in shaking off military rule with pressure to complete the process of democratic reform. Obama, greeted by enthusiastic crowds in the former capital, Yangon, met President Thein Sein, a former junta […]
Japan ruling party lawmaker Mieko Nakabayashi isn’t just worried that her Democratic Party will lose power in next month’s election; she fears a comeback by rival conservative Liberal Democrats will spell a return to the prolonged one-party rule that critics blame for many of the country’s past policy ills. Three years after the Democratic Party of […]
China formally opened a congress of its ruling Communist Party on Thursday, ushering in a once-in-a-decade leadership change against a backdrop of growing social unrest, public anger at corruption and a yawning gap between rich and poor. More than 2,000 hand-picked delegates gathered at Beijing’s cavernous Great Hall of the People for the start of the […]
In the end, President Barack Obama won re-election on the issue that was supposed to send him packing: the sluggish U.S. economy. The United States is still digging out from the deepest recession in 80 years, and employers are barely adding enough jobs to keep pace with population growth. Trillions of dollars of household wealth have vanished in […]
President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are essentially tied on the eve of Election Day, but the Democrat has a slight edge in some of the pivotal states where the election will be decided, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling released on Monday. Nationally, 48 percent of likely voters surveyed said they supported Democrat Obama […]
A stake through the heart might keep Silvio Berlusconi out of Italian politics, but it better be hammered in hard. Last week he renounced all intention of running again for the premiership of Italy, then received a four-year prison sentence (later reduced to a year) for tax evasion. Read Here – Reuters
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