BY FRIDA GHITIS For all the luxuries they enjoy, dictators live in a state of constant fear. Without the trust of their people they must always protect themselves against real, imagined, or even potential plots. They may be paranoid, but they’re right to be afraid. That’s true now more than ever. These are scary times [...]
By Marc Frank HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba has shut down one of the most important western trading companies in the country as an investigation into alleged corrupt import-export practices broadened to a second Canadian firm, foreign business sources said on Friday. State security agents on Friday watched who entered the building in Havana’s Miramar Trade [...]
Researchers have shown for the first time that the protein fortilin promotes growth of cancer cells by binding to and rendering inert protein p53, a known tumor suppressor. This finding by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch may lead to treatments for a range of cancers and atherosclerosis, which p53 also helps prevent, [...]
There is a tendency (especially in today’s political climate) to frame the Founders in “right” or “left” terms. I am pretty confident that the vast majority colonial Americans did not see the world, or the framing of the Republic in right and left terms. The whole notion of “right” and “left” is a European construct [...]
Fierce clashes between Yemeni government forces and Al Qaeda linked militants in southern Yemen overnight killed 14, including 12 militants, officials said Wednesday. Late Wednesday, loud explosions and exchanges of fire were heard in the capital Sanaa in the neighborhood where the chief of the main tribe opposing Yemen’s president lives. There were no immediate [...]
From Egypt to Libya to Iraq and a dozen other countries around the world, a massive democratic movement is happening in the Middle East. This historic revolution was fueled in large part by the Iraq war and is growing dramatically each day. But the future of this revolution may not be what the citizens of [...]
With remnants of the Gaddafi regime restricted to a few last outposts, Libya’s transitional authorities now face the challenge of running a country emerging from war. The National Transitional Council (NTC), formed in the eastern city of Benghazi to lead the uprising, is gradually establishing itself in the capital, Tripoli, with ambitious plans. It wants [...]
KABUL, Afghanistan — A cargo truck packed with explosives struck a NATO outpost south of the capital late Saturday, killing at least 5 people and wounding dozens more, including 77 members of coalition troops, NATO and Afghan officials said Sunday. Among the dead was an 8-year-old girl who officials said was hit by flying shrapnel [...]
By Michael Allen on Sep 9, 2011 Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm that occupied the 101st to 105th floors of the north tower at the World Trade Center, was decimated on 9/11. Out of the 960 company employees, 658 in New York City were killed on that fateful day. Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick was [...]
DHOBLEY, Somalia — Adan Dahir Hassan sits in a bald office, wires dangling from the ceiling, handing out death sentences. Recently installed by an Islamist warlord, Mr. Hassan recalled how he had ordered a soldier who had killed a civilian, possibly by accident, to be delivered to the victim’s family, which promptly shot him in [...]
When pondering U.S. relations with Cuba and how to effect democratic change there, it helps to retain the perspective of history. Just sending athletes to Cuba to engage in some “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” won’t change Cuba. In reading the recent spate of articles suggesting American athletes be sent to Cuba to supplement hard-nose diplomats, I was [...]
NICOLAS SARKOZY has had a good war. The armed campaign in Libya was the French president’s biggest gamble, the moment he put his reputation, judgment and leadership on the line. France, along with Britain, carried out the bulk of the air strikes. Unlike President Barack Obama, Mr Sarkozy enjoyed cross-party support for the campaign and [...]
A group of US experts led by a former top environment official has visited Cuba to gather information on the communist country’s Gulf of Mexicooil exploration plans, according to state media. William Reilly, who led the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former president George H.W. Bush and led a commission on the BP oil [...]
An oral history of the Mariel boatlift, Voices From Mariel is a somewhat artless compendium of talking-head interviews, historical news footage and familiar scenes of an exile’s emotional return to his homeland. Director Jim Carleton has assembled his film in the simplest, most obvious way possible, and the repetitive structure and lack of dramatic thrust [...]
When it comes to futuristic space travel, few concepts are more romantic than sailing on sunlight. Soar above Earth, unfurl a jib and tack your way through the solar system all the way to interstellar space. Solar sails have been a mainstay of dreamers since Johannes Kepler, who speculated four centuries ago that ships would [...]
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is expected to propose $300 billion in federal spending and tax cuts Thursday night to get Americans working again. Republicans offered Tuesday to compromise with him on jobs — but also assailed his plans in advance of his prime-time speech. Lawmakers began returning to the Capitol to tackle legislation on [...]
Growing up Cuban: Memories of our first day in the US! Listen to internet radio with Silvio Canto Jr on Blog Talk Radio
Fires can be devastating to a home, property, rangeland, community, or state. About 370,000 homes are the scenes of fires each year, and about 80 percent of deaths from fire occur in homes, according to the National Fire Protection Association. An overwhelming number of the victims are children and the elderly. Knowing fire myths from [...]
(Reuters) – Wildfires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in Texas crept closer to the Dallas-Fort Worth area on Tuesday, razing some upscale homes near a lake and threatening hundreds more homes. The fires started in sparsely populated west Texas and have moved east, helped by bone dry conditions and winds whipping up [...]
Many families of 9/11 victims still have not received their invitation to attend the historic 10th-anniversary ceremony at the new Ground Zero memorial because of a bureaucratic bungle. About 2,800 mailings to families — which include the numbered credentials required to gain entry to the site — were not sent out until Monday. The late [...]