Iran’s decision to halt oil shipments to the U.K. and France last weekend is a weak retaliatory measure against European actors for tougher sanctions. Despite this largely symbolic measure, Iran did manage to surprise world markets and drive up the price of oil. The U.K. imposed its hardest-hitting sanctions to …
On February 21, President Hugo Chavez told the Venezuelan people he will soon undergo another round of surgery. The breaking story was characteristically brief and uninformative. Chavez said doctors had detected a new lesion in the area of previous cancer surgery. He claimed the lesion is small. Following the removal …
The wave of populist uprisings has now hit South Asia. This time, the democratically elected leader of the Maldives has been ousted by an intimidating combination of radical Islamists, police, and military dissenters. On February 7, dramatic protests broke out in the Maldives, an island nation just south of India. …
The horrific fire in a Honduran prison that claimed the lives of 358 prisoners highlights a worsening crisis of violence, insecurity, and institutional failure in Central America. Right now the U.S. could use a fire hose, not a garden hose, in the region. But the Obama Administration’s response to the …
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States was extremely short on substance. It was really just a public relations exercise for both sides aimed at audiences back home. And as for building rapport between leaders, by nature, the visit was bound to come up short. President Obama …
Iran’s defiant regime boasted this week about the nuclear progress it claims to have made despite growing sanctions and international pressure to halt its nuclear weapons program. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presided over a high-profile televised ceremony in which he inserted what was described as an Iranian-made fuel rod into a …
Echoing the findings of The Heritage Foundation’s 2012 Index of Economic Freedom, the latest edition of The Economist sums up well the current status of America’s business environment: The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation.… The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently …
The Syrian government’s sickening attacks on its own people continues unabated. Syrian government troops are pushing into the city of Daraa, where resistance is currently concentrated, near the Jordanian border south of Damascus. This follows equally brutal sieges on the rebellious cities of Homs and Hama, which the Assad regime …
