From the BBC: A top US adviser on Iraq has accused the US military of glossing over an upsurge in violence, just months before its troops are due to be withdrawn.Iraq is more dangerous now than a year ago, said a report issued by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart W Bowen […]

Forget the 2012 Olympics.  An extraordinary exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci paintings and drawings will be at the National Gallery on London’s Trafalgar Square November 9 of this fall through February 5 of next year.  That’s usually a dark and cold time in the UK, but cheap flights are easier to find at that time […]

Supreme Venezuelan leader, grand caudillo of the Bolivarian revolution and aspiring nemesis of the US Hugo Chavez is sounding a softer note as he returns to Venezuela from cancer surgery in Cuba.  We need to persuade the middle classes they are needed, he said, denouncing efforts by overzealous underlings to push the Bolivarian revolution too […]

From The Times of India comes this report: BEIJING: A serving Chinese military general is citing India’s capabilities in his efforts to edge the government to have more than one aircraft carrier. General Luo Yuan, a senior researcher with the Academy of Military Sciences, said China needs at least three aircraft carriers to defend its […]

Edwin Edwards, the most colorful political felon in America, has remarried at 84.  The lucky bride is 32 years old; they met after she began writing him letters while he was serving a well-deserved prison sentence for ripping off the citizens of Louisiana he swore to protect.Louisiana needs all the help it can get, but […]

The last Friday before Ramadan saw massive protests across Syria, but the country’s two largest cities, and the foundations of the government’s power, were relatively subdued.Ramadan begins in the next couple of days; protesters hope for huge national demonstrations against the increasingly unpopular, isolated and bloody regime.But the dog that did not bark is still […]

95 years ago today, 2 million tons of explosives waiting for shipment to the allies in World War I exploded on a small island in New York harbor next to the Statue of Liberty.  Seven people were killed; the explosion was heard in Philadelphia; windows were shattered 40 miles away.Almost forgotten today, the Black Tom […]

There’s a mystery at the normally quiescent Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.  The suspension of Charles Monnett from his government job is either the collapse of yet another powerful claim of the environmental movement, a normal government personnel action blown out of all proportion, or a cynical decision by the Obama administration […]

In April a 12-year old girl filed for divorce from her 82-year old husband, who had paid the girl’s father a $23,000 dowry, runs a story in today’s Wall Street Journal.  The divorce was granted, and now some in the Ministry want to ban child marriage all together.Not so fast! says Sheik Saleh al-Fawzan, one […]

Anne Marie Slaughter, successor to people like George Kennan and Frank Fukuyama in the top State Department policy planning bureau, is one of the country’s most influential foreign policy thinkers. She was a strong supporter of  the initial intervention in Libya on humanitarian groundsNow in the FT she calling for a compromise end to the […]