In his interview with CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria, George Soros had some lamenting to do. He told Zakaria that Obama “has lost control of the [county’s ecnomic] agenda” and as a result it’s been left “in the hands of the Republican Party”. Though Soros thinks the GOP will be successful in its pursuit of cutting services and denying any tax increases, he thinks those developments... 

Iranian warship Alvand. Two Iranian naval ships will sail through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean on Monday, a Suez Canal official said, in what will be the first passage of Iranian naval ships through the canal since 1979. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has described Iran’s plan to send the ships through the canal en route to Syria as a “provocation.” The official... 

Joschka Fischer at the launch of his Iraq war memoir, I Am Not Convinced, in Berlin. Joschka Fischer accuses former CIA chief George Tenet over his knowledge of Iraqi defector’s sketchy background. Germany’s former foreign minister Joschka Fischer has accused the former head of the CIA George Tenet of making implausible claims about the handling of the Curveball case by the US. On Wednesday... 

Russia urges Israel’s government to freeze construction of settlements in the West Bank, which violates international law and hinders Palestinian-Israeli talks, Russia’s permanent representative at the United Nations Vitaly Churkin told a UN Security Council session on Friday. According to Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency the UN Security Council on Friday failed to pass a resolution... 

An Israeli border police officer walks out from a Palestinian house during clashes with Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against the expansion of the nearby Jewish settlement of Halamish in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. The United States has vetoed a draft UN resolution condemning the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, turning a deaf ear to international... 

President Obama warned of stopped Social Security checks and issued a formal veto threat Tuesday to the Republican spending plan currently being debated in the House, setting the stage for a potential government shutdown next month. Democrats in the last congress did not pass a budget at all, so the government has run on a series of stopgap spending extensions since October. The current one expires... 

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key meets Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Auckland. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has used an historical speech to New Zealand’s parliament to boost trans-Tasman ties with a pledge for more leader talks and greater economic unity. Ms Gillard jetted home to Canberra on Wednesday having made history as the first foreign politician to address the NZ parliament. It... 

Barack Obama with King Abdullah II of Jordan (Left) The president made a weekend call to Jordanian King Abdullah II to assure him of U.S. support, but also to say that Washington wants Jordan to move toward reform. With protests rocking the Middle East, the Obama administration is reaching out to King Abdullah II of Jordan, trying to reassure a badly shaken ally of its support even as it calls for... 

David Cameron will relaunch his big idea, the Big Society, in a keynote speech on Monday amid growing fears in the Conservative Party that it has started to backfire on the Government. As local authorities and voluntary groups feel the impact of the spending cuts, some ministers are worried that the Big Society will be seen by the public as an attempt to mask the cuts and hand state-financed services... 

Many ECHR judges never spent a day on the bench in their home countries. What specific benefits accrue to the United Kingdom as a result of our adhesion to the European Convention on Human Rights? It ought to be the most basic question of all, yet it is almost never asked. Most politicians, together with virtually the entire legal establishment, take our continued membership as a datum or given; yet... 

Russian diplomats are reporting in the Kremlin today that the “shockwave” of the new doctrine enunciated by President Obama for the United States has reverberated throughout the corridors of power in both the West and East and now threatens the Old Order established in the aftermath of World War II, but to what ends can still not be determined. To fully understand the new Obama Doctrine it is... 

Japan’s foreign minister said Thursday that Tokyo’s claim over the disputed Kuril islands remains “absolutely unwavering” despite Russia’s decision to boost its military presence on the territory. Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, who is due to visit Moscow from Friday, said Russia’s occupation of the islands is illegal and shrugged off President Dmitry Medvedev’s... 

Iran has made yet another announcement about the development of a new type of weapon. The Iranian administration claimed that it was going to launch the mass production of new ballistic missiles. According to Chief Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the missiles, called the Persian Gulf, develop the speed of 3,675 kilometers an hour and strike targets... 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has censured multiculturalism a failure, joining other western leaders that have already rejected the notion despite boasting freedom as a founding principle. Sarkozy declared in a televised interview on Thursday that “I don’t want a society where communities coexist side by side” and that “France will not welcome people... 

Mubarak transfers power to vice president. Protesters enraged by Hosni Mubarak’s latest refusal to step down streamed into Cairo’s central square Friday and took positions outside key symbols of the hated regime, promising to expand their push to drive the Egyptian president out. The standoff posed a major test for the military as protesters stepped up calls for the army to intervene against...