Prime Minister Salam Fayyad  and PA President Mahmoud Abbas

The talks were the result of a Quartet plan to have Israelis and Palestinians make proposals on territory and security in hopes of reaching a deal in 2012. Questions abound, but the most important is, "How many more times will this farce be played out without recognition of the real and incompatible bottom lines of the two parties?"

It is that fundamental incompatibility — not the lack of pressure or lack of bribes — that prevents the present creation of the mythical "two-state solution" embedded in the Oslo Accords, negotiated without U.S. participation, and signed in 1993.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Matt Berkman, a BDS conference organizer and graduate student at Penn, argued that a writer for the Exponent had published biased articles against the BDS effort to “bring an end to Israel’s system of oppression, segregation and dispossession,” through calls for boycotts and divestment of Israel and Israeli products.  Due to the alleged bias reporting, the Penn BDS group disinvited the reporter.  They did say that another Jewish Exponent reporter, whose coverage he felt had been fairer, may be able to attend.

In the latest chapter of a long-running border environmental mystery, U.S. federal and state officials plan a visit to south Texas this coming week. Representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS) are expected to be in the area around South Alamo, Texas, from February 6 to 12. The purpose of their trip is to inform residents about the risk of eating contaminated fish from the Donna Reservoir and Canal.

Located in Hidalgo County just north of the Rio Grande, the Donna Reservoir and Canal is an EPA Superfund site. Historically used to supply drinking and irrigation water to the surrounding region, the 400-acre reservoir and connecting canal system were put on a federal priority list for action in 2007. The listing came after excessive levels of chemical PCBs were detected in fish beginning nearly two decades ago. Sampling by the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife has documented the presence of PCBs in the tissue of fish from the Donna site.

Iranian news websites report that Saudi Arabia has blocked the official website of Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which is available in a dozen languages, including Arabic. "Shafaf" says Khamenei's website was blocked by Saudi officials ahead of his sermons for Friday Prayers on February 3, parts of which the Iranian leader delivered in Arabic.
 
The hard-line "Shafaf" website posted a screenshot of the page it claims Saudi users get when they try to access Khamenei's website. The website claims Saudi officials decided to block Khamenei's official website because of what it described as Iran's influence on the "Islamic awakening." Iranian officials have been using the term as part of their efforts to put their own stamp on the Arab Spring uprisings, which they claim have been inspired by Iran's own 1979 revolution.

Arab countries and Muslim organizations are reacting angrily to a veto by Russia and China of a UN Security Council draft resolution based on an Arab League plan to end the violence in Syria. Western governments also issued highly critical remarks about Moscow's veto, suggesting Russia is more interested in protecting a naval base it leases from Syria and lucrative weapons contracts with President Bashar al-Assad's government than preventing the killing of thousands of people.

Russia has repeatedly referred to the draft UN resolution as being written by Western powers. In fact, it was drafted by Arab League countries and submitted to the Security Council by Morocco -- with Western backing -- after Arab League monitors witnessed Syrian Army snipers killing unarmed antiregime protesters. The Arab League's plan called for Assad to step down and be replaced by his deputy until elections can be held. Russia said it put too much blame on Assad's regime for the deaths in Syria.

In terms of economics the notion of mutual recognition refers to international agreements in which two or more countries agree to recognize one another and guarantee free movement of goods and services without the need to harmonize member states' national legislation. A good illustration of this would be the European Union. The Middle East is no Europe and in the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic, although the notion is referenced, it actually refers to a more basic construct that is one's actual existence -- in other words, do Palestinians recognize the existence of a Jewish State? And can Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in peace?

It has become clear that the answer is "no" and that Palestinians would rather ignore the basis of this understanding and focus on the so-called economics of the equation. That is, since there is no trade and no exchange of goods between Israelis and Palestinians they should ignore it altogether. But let us not forget that there is no actual Palestinian state and that Israel is dealing with a non-state actor governed by radical Islamist ideology and, second, the largest Palestinian export product is violence and terrorism, which, in turn, is used to target innocent civilians in Israel.

Clearly this Super Bowl performance continued that upward trend, showing that her genius continues well into her third decade as a performer.  Only a rare group of people can make a similar claim.

As they described in a November article in the science journal Nature Geoscience, the bi-national team analyzed a 10-year dataset of atmospheric measurements taken by the US Southern Great Plains research facility in Oklahoma. This facility is run by the US Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program.

This new technology helps drivers drive better," says Litman. "It knows how to recognize cars, bikes, motorbikes, pedestrians, an impending accident ... it warns the driver in time. It can even stop the car if the driver doesn't react quickly enough -- and all this at high speeds." In effect, minimizing driver error. "There are three main causes of accidents: poor road infrastructure, unsafe vehicles and bad driving," he explains. "Both roads and vehicle design have improved significantly in the past three decades. But the human factor has not. The only aspect that hasn't improved is the driver."

Now, however, it appears that Dennis Ross is back, or rather, he never left.

According to an article published Monday in Haaretz, the White House is maintaining a decidedly unusual relationship with Ross. Reporter Barak Ravid, who specializes in breaking behind-the-scenes stories from anonymous sources reports that the administration has installed a direct, secured telephone line to Ross's office.

Iran is one of the foremost, self-proclaimed enemies of the West and one of the most serious threats to stability in the Middle East.

The Iranian government’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law, and its anti-Western philosophy, inspire the rise of Islamic extremists across the world. Iran is also one of the principal state sponsors of terror, proudly delivering weapons to Hezbollah members in Lebanon and terrorists affiliated with the Palestinian Authority.

Additionally, the regime in Iran continues to provide safe haven for terrorists, including some of al-Qaeda’s senior leaders such as Yasin al-Suri, Saif al-Adel and Abu Muhammad al-Masri who have been hunted by the United States for over a decade. Moreover, Iranian agents have been implicated in many anti-Western and anti-Israel terrorist attacks, including bombings that have killed U.S. servicemen in Iraq and the foiled attempt to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. in October 2011.

President Hisashi Owada of the International Court reads out sentence.

The United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on February 3 that Italy has violated its obligation to respect Germany"s immunity under international law by allowing civil claims seeking reparations for Nazi war crimes to be brought against it in Italian courts.

Germany filed the case in December 2008 after a court in Italy ordered Berlin to compensate an Italian civilian sent to a German labour camp in 1944. Germany had claimed that the ruling failed to respect the jurisdictional immunity that it has a right to under international law.

Germany had also claimed that it had already paid reparations under international treaties with Italy and argued that as a sovereign State it has immunity in Italian courts. At the same time, it fully acknowledged the untold suffering inflicted on Italians during the war.

Syrian Protesters

At the United Nations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for an international response to the crisis in Syria, warning that if the UN fails to act it should consider itself complicit with the brutal regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.  There are certainly steps that the United States could take to assist in the downfall of one of the world's most despicable regimes, although such an outcome is far from certain. Furthermore, prospects for a post-Assad government that aligns with U.S. interests offer little basis for optimism, assuming the aftermath of similar "Arab Spring" revolutions is any indication. With fighting reported in the suburbs of Damascus and a near daily drama playing out at Turtle Bay, Syria has reached an inflection point. For the United States, however, attempts to contribute to a solution and take a constructive role in shaping Syria's future are hampered by a long list of unknowns.

Super PAC American Crossroads and its sister organization raised more than $51 million last year with more than 60 percent of the total flowing into Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit arm that is not required to report its donors. American Crossroads, a Super PAC that reports to the Federal Election Commission, raked in $18.4 million last year, including a $5 million donation from Texas tycoon Harold Simmons, plus another $2 million from Contran, a company that he controls, according to Crossroads sources.

Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit group that shares leadership and offices with American Crossroads, pulled in $31.6 million last year, a ratio similar to what the two groups accounted for in 2010 when they raised a combined $71 million. The two Republican groups were launched in 2010 by GOP super consultants Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. They are now getting fundraising help from former Mississippi Governor and ex-party chairman Haley Barbour. The groups have publicly said that they’re shooting to raise at least $240 million to help the GOP win the White House and control both houses of Congress. Donors and fundraisers who have been solicited by Barbour and other group leaders, say that privately the two Crossroads groups are aiming for $300 million, the most ambitious outside effort underway. Currently plans call for spending about half the funds to help take the White House, and the rest to win the Senate and keep the House, say fundraisers close to the groups. The Crossroads groups appear to be the biggest beneficiaries of court rulings in 2010 that permitted corporations, individuals and unions to give unlimited amounts to groups that expressly advocate for or against candidates.

Democrats face a politically tricky choice over whether to pursue a compromise with Republicans on immigration reform that was recently floated by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The Republican presidential contenders are willing to grant illegal immigrants legal status if they came to the country at a young age and served in the military. It’s a tough election-year call for Democrats for several reasons. Immigration reform has been a winning issue for them as staunch GOP opposition has driven Hispanic voters to support Democratic candidates in recent cycles.

Hispanic voters helped Democrats win tough Senate races in Colorado and Nevada in 2010. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) bolstered his standing among Hispanic voters by claiming immigration reform as one of his highest priorities. During his State of the Union address last month, President Obama called for Congress to resurrect the DREAM Act, even though lawmakers say there is virtually no chance of it passing the GOP-controlled House. Striking a compromise would allow Republicans to earn some points with Hispanic voters and lessen pressure on Republican lawmakers to support more comprehensive immigration reform. Walking away from possible common ground, however, could leave Democrats open to criticism that they missed a chance to make incremental progress.

Some readers have compared this book to the work of Malcolm Gladwell. It's not hard to see why; the core strategy of Gladwell mega-bestsellers such as The Tipping Point -- arrestingly simple assertion illustrated with anecdotal information from a variety of fields -- is very much in evidence here. But in an important sense, The Myth of Choice, which is about as well-written as anything in Gladwell's entertaining oeuvre, proves to be a more satisfying experience. That's because the illustrations are enlisted in the service in a more focused world view: that the libertarian cast of our sociopolitical discourse is at best misguided and at worst plays into the hands of those who manipulate our false sense of sovereignty in the service of their often pernicious agendas.

It's apparent that Kent Greenfield's life experiences have served him well. Born in small-town Kentucky, the son of a Baptist minister and a schoolteacher, he went to Brown and clerked for Supreme Court justice David Souter before taking a position at Boston College Law School. Each of these elements -- plain-spoken eloquence, intellectual rigor, a methodical cast of mind, flinty New England skepticism -- blend in his first-person voice. He writes as engagingly about a childhood contest of wills with an elementary school teacher as he does in parsing legal opinions. This is a book that can be read in a single sitting -- but also dispensed as bite-sized assignments in any number of humanities or social science courses.

Fukushima Disaster

The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of worldwide nuclear radiation.

The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war.” In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami: “This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”

Nuclear radiation—which threatens life on planet earth—is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local crime scene or tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

Syrian Protesters

The assumption, however, that the regime's days are numbered is seriously flawed. After all, U.S. and EU sanctions may have driven up food and energy prices, but it has failed to fundamentally alter the regime's behavior. The Arab League even took the unprecedented step of kicking Syria out of the organization and dispatching a 165-member delegation of observers to monitor the situation inside the country. This was done, in the hope that their presence would reduce the level of violence. Yet, that mission has proven to be a failure, with the average daily death toll climbing to 50 since the monitors arrived in late December.

Iranian Warships

The new strategy calls for sufficient forces in one major conflict and a rebalancing of these forces toward the Asia-Pacific region. Some will question if this is a new strategy or just a precursor for the massive cuts in the military that are projected in the next decade. The Department of Defense has already commited to $450 million in reductions over the next several years. If Congress fails to act on the latest "sequestration", however, this number could grow to $1 trillion in cuts. The major problem with this strategy of course being, the enemy has yet to surrender.

Mitt Romney

A source close to Romney's campaign told The Hill on February 2 that Trump would endorse the former Massachusetts governor at the casino he owns in Las Vegas. The confirmation capped a dizzying day with early reports from The New York Times and The Associated Press, stating Newt Gingrich's campaign expected the endorsement to come their way and other reports suggesting Trump would back Romney.

The United States Senate

An exasperated Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on February 2 tried to drive a wedge between President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate, pointing out that a series of jobs bills the president endorsed have already passed the House. Boehner used his weekly press conference to respond to the  "Startup America" initiative the president announced this week, in which the White House said Obama was sending to Congress legislative proposals to help small businesses and new companies. House Republicans noted with glee that they have already passed four of the bills Obama is “sending up.”

“Well guess what, Mr. President? We’ve done our work,” Boehner told reporters, employing a mocking tone that he's used repeatedly in recent weeks when discussing the president’s agenda. “Call [Majority Leader] Harry Reid [D-Nev.] and see if the Senate’s ever going to do anything over there.”
Boehner held up each of the House-passed bills, which aim to make it easier for small businesses to access capital and attract new investors. Two bills would extend tax write-offs for small businesses and expedite the visa system for foreign workers.

British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement: The West's Secret Pact to Get Mideast Oil is the third and latest entry in an series of books written by award-winning investigative journalist Edwin Black that tackles the issues surrounding automobiles, energy, and transportation. The previous two books are Internal Combustion and The Plan: How to Rescue Society the Day the Oil Stops. As with all of his other books, Black relies upon a crack research team to uncover and compile an exhaustive trove of heretofore unknown factual information and data.

Buy it here. See Book TV here.

To me, as a dedicated free-market capitalist and defender of American ideals, I would like to believe that the story of petroleum oil exploration should be one of entrepreneurial glory. Instead, the more I learn about the corruption and machinations employed by British Petroleum and its industry cohorts and competitors, the more I realize that we have been the victims of oil’s subjugation for well over 100 years.

With the rise of industrialization and the advent of the automobile and other forms of engine-powered transportation, the world needed a standardized source of fuel for the new machines. That fuel could easily have been a fuel produced by virtually anyone using organic materials. However, a fuel based on simple vegetation or human waste, and a common distillation process that couldn't be patented left little on the table for those who sought unbridled power and wealth. British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement reads like the most exciting Tom Clancy novel entwined with a devious international conspiracy worthy of Ian Fleming’s wildest James Bond adventure; although even for a 007 yarn it might run the risk of being considered too implausible a plot. Buy it here.

Syrian Protests

Over the past two weeks, as Arab League monitors visited Syria, the FSA has expanded the scope and scale of their operation, wresting control of towns - and for a time neighborhoods of Damascus - from the Assad regime.

While the FSA is largely a franchise rather than a centrally commanded militia, it now represents a major force within the Syrian opposition that Washington is struggling to reckon with. The FSA emerged last summer as a collection of Syrian military defectors who fled to Turkey. Once dismissed as a mere Internet phenomena, the FSA and other domestically based groups of armed defectors joined forces to carry out attacks against regime forces throughout the country.

"Restore Our Future" raised nearly $18 million in the second half of 2011 to go with the $12.2 million the group brought in for the first half of the year. The group has spent $17.5 million so far in the primary races, just about double that of pro-Gingrich group "Winning Our Future." The super PAC has poured millions of dollars into advertising criticizing the former House Speaker.

The investment industry was far and away the most generous donor to the pro-Romney campaign. Donors included included several buddies from his old employer, Bain Capital, who gave a combined $750,000. The top donors were Julian Robertson of Tiger Management LLC and Paul Singer of Elliott Management Corp. Both gave $1 million. Robertson is a hedge fund pioneer and wealthy investor. Singer is known for buying other nations' bad debt and collecting on it for a profit. Rooney Holdings Inc., a Tulsa, Oklahoma, construction company, also gave $1 million.

Mali has experienced perhaps the most significant external repercussions from the downfall of the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The impact of the conflict in Libya on the wider region since international intervention began in March 2011.

Instability in Libya due to that country's deep internal fault lines meant that re-establishing a government would prove difficult. As we pointed out, that instability could spread to neighboring countries as weapons and combatants flow outward from Libya. Reports now indicate that thousands of armed Tuareg tribesmen who previously served in Gadhafi's military have returned home to Mali. The influx of this large number of well-armed and well-trained fighters, led by a former Libyan army colonel, has re-energized the long-simmering Tuareg insurgency against the Malian government. These Tuareg insurgents have formed a new group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). In mid-January, they began a military campaign to free three northern regions of Mali from Bamako's control.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy

The German government has proposed that a European commissioner be appointed to supplant the Greek government. While phrasing the German proposal this way might seem extreme, it is not unreasonable. Under the German proposal, this commissioner would hold power over the Greek national budget and taxation. Since the European Central Bank already controls the Greek currency, the euro, this would effectively transfer control of the Greek government to the European Union, since whoever controls a country's government expenditures, tax rates and monetary policy effectively controls that country. The German proposal therefore would suspend Greek sovereignty and the democratic process as the price of financial aid to Greece.

Though the European Commission rejected the proposal, the concept is far from dead, as it flows directly from the logic of the situation. The Greeks are in the midst of a financial crisis that has made Greece unable to repay money Athens borrowed. Their options are to default on the debt or to negotiate a settlement with their creditors. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union are managing these negotiations.

Last month, Victor Davis Hanson published a fascinating article on why Iran might nevertheless decide to start a war it can’t win. Within the body of the article, he analyzed several cases in which countries did exactly that, including the Korean War in 1950, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1982 Falklands War, and the 1991 Gulf War, and found three common factors: pressing domestic crises, belief that the West might acquiesce in their aggression, and conviction that even if it didn’t, the Western response would stop well short of regime change. In short, their leaders had something to gain (domestic distraction) and nothing irreversible to lose.

While surely relevant to Iran, Hanson’s analysis is equally relevant to another Mideast powder keg, one created by the combination of Egypt’s revolution and a troubling change in Western attitudes toward the Israeli-Arab peace process. The former left Egypt with a major economic crisis. And the latter has assured Arab states that attacking Israel carries no risk of irreversible losses. Even if a war results in Israel capturing Arab territory, the West will demand that it return every last inch.

This begs the question, is the Jewish community so gullible that wider domestic issues and looming foreign matters are less important than whether kosher meals are funded by the public for seniors?

Putting the facts into perspective, the bulk of the Jewish seniors whom Mr. Gingrich was targeting with his robo-call this week are registered Democrats and had little say in the Republican primary.  He knew that however, as does any candidate who does the right research before allocating precious time and limited resources in a presidential race. So why do it at all?

Palestine the Book, by Jonathan Bloomfield

Most recently, last April and May we watched the 24 hour news channels as large regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi were hit by the largest storms since the early 1900s, and the Morganza Spillway was intentionally opened, destroying nearly 5000 square miles of inhabited land to spare total destruction of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, on the heels of the 2005 hurricane that nearly wiped out the whole Gulf region. What if the people who lived there or were visiting the area then had no way to escape?

The prospect is frightening and for just about all of us, unimaginable. Now imagine the threat is not a tidal wave, rushing floodwaters, a violent tornado or some other natural disaster, and something that can wipe out life as we know it for years to come, destroying not just property, but everyone and everything in its wake. Imagine the threat is a nuclear explosion, the mushroom cloud in the distance, the flash of light and the torrent effect of the ripple that tears through everything in its path, leaving death and darkness then nothingness.

This is a fear that we face living in a nuclear world, but one that we here in the United States feel is either so remote or could hit elsewhere, but not in my backyard. However, in Israel, the fear is real. With the entire country being just 8,019 square miles; extending about 200 mi north to south and just 70 miles east to west; with its narrowest point being only 12 miles across, there is nowhere to go to outrun a nuclear attack, nowhere to hide and nothing to do but watch the end of the world take hold.

Japan used seawater to cool nuclear fuel at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant after the tsunami in March 2011—and that was probably the best action to take at the time, says Professor Alexandra Navrotsky of the University of California, Davis.

But Navrotsky and others have since discovered a new way in which seawater can corrode nuclear fuel, forming uranium compounds that could potentially travel long distances, either in solution or as very small particles. The research team published its work in January in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This is a phenomenon that has not been considered before,” said Alexandra Navrotsky, distinguished professor of ceramic, earth, and environmental materials chemistry. “We don’t know how much this will increase the rate of corrosion, but it is something that will have to be considered in future.”

Anyone who has flown on a commercial airline since 2001 is well aware of increasingly strict measures at airport security checkpoints. A study by Illinois researchers demonstrates that intensive screening of all passengers actually makes the system less secure by overtaxing security resources. University of Illinois computer science and mathematics professor Sheldon H. Jacobson, in collaboration with Adrian J. Lee at the Central Illinois Technology and Education Research Institute, explored the benefit of matching passenger risk with security assets. The pair detailed their work in the journal Transportation Science.

“A natural tendency, when limited information is available about from where the next threat will come, is to overestimate the overall risk in the system,” Jacobson said. “This actually makes the system less secure by over-allocating security resources to those in the system that are low on the risk scale relative to others in the system.” When overestimating the population risk, a larger proportion of high-risk passengers are designated for too little screening while a larger proportion of low-risk passengers are subjected to too much screening. With security resources devoted to the many low-risk passengers, those resources are less able to identify or address high-risk passengers. Nevertheless, current policies favor broad screening.

New research reveals how the arrival of the first plants 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford, the study is published in Nature Geoscience. The team set out to identify the effects that the first land plants had on the climate during the Ordovician Period, which ended 444 million years ago. During this period the climate gradually cooled, leading to a series of 'ice ages'. This global cooling was caused by a dramatic reduction in atmospheric carbon, which this research now suggests was triggered by the arrival of plants.

Among the first plants to grow on land were the ancestors of mosses that grow today. This study shows that they extracted minerals such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and iron from rocks in order to grow. In so doing, they caused chemical weathering of the Earth's surface. This had a dramatic impact on the global carbon cycle and subsequently on the climate. It could also have led to a mass extinction of marine life.

Spanish President Mariano Rajoy and Basque leader Patxi Lopez

As part of its spending cuts program, the Spanish government presented a law that would give the central government more control over Spain's autonomous regions. The justification for the law stems from the regions' increasing deficit and the central government's need for more resources. Some regions see this law as an attempt to centralize Madrid's authority and as a potential threat to the delicate balance between the regions and the central government -- a defining feature of Spanish politics. The law will pass out of financial necessity, but its implementation will generate tension between Madrid and the regional administrations.

The Spanish Council of Ministers on Jan. 27 approved a preliminary draft of the Stability and Sustainability Law, meant to reduce Spain's public deficit and debt. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party (PP) holds enough of a majority in parliament to ensure the law's adoption, without much modification, in early February. Under the new law, Spain's public debt may not exceed 60 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and the central and regional administrations must reduce their structural deficit to zero by 2020. This law replicates at Spain's internal level the kind of fiscal oversight the European Union intends to apply to member countries.

Russia's political landscape has been relatively calm and consolidated for the past decade under former President and current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. However, recent months have seen instability rise sharply, with a purge in the government, a shift in parliamentary election results and large protests in the streets. None of these is new to Russia, but these and other factors are converging and creating changes in Russia's political landscape.

When Putin came to power in 1999, he ruled a country that was in utter political disarray, economically broken and threatened by internal and external forces. He aggressively consolidated the country politically, economically and socially and quashed the security threats. The country rallied around him as Russia's "savior," a sentiment that in recent years evolved into a cult based on the belief that Putin is the sole heartbeat of the country.

But Russia cannot survive indefinitely under one ruler; historically, internal dissent has risen and fallen inside the inherently unstable country. Such dissent had been under control for the last decade, allowing the country to strengthen. But now dissent is on the rise again, both outside the Kremlin and within Putin's circles of power. All of this comes as Russia is facing economic instability and national security concerns, and Russia's next presidential election -- in which Putin is running -- is a mere month away.

The video calling market can be divided into three sub-markets, depending on the device which is being used to make the call: PCs, Mobile, and living room (digital home) devices. Living room video calling is a nascent market and currently has a relatively small user base. New NPD In-Stat research forecasts that total users will increase from 1.5 million in 2011 to 16.4 million in 2015. Asia Pacific will be the largest market for living room video calling by a significant margin, due to this being the region with the highest video calling enabled device shipments.

Video calling originated on the PC and these services are significantly more mature than on other device types. While PC video calling solutions have been available for several years, these services continue to evolve in functionality. The most notable change to PC video calling is the association with social networking and the unification of these solutions with social networks.

A handful of Democratic super PACs and nonprofits reported raising together just over $19 million last year, a paltry sum compared to the leading GOP groups.

The groups formed last year to help President Barack Obama win a second term and improve Democrats’ congressional fortunes,

The total is based on a joint press release the groups issued Tuesday evening and includes over $6.7 million for Priorities USA and Priorities USA Action, started in early 2011 by two former White House aides, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney — a slow start toward their goal of roping in $100 million to spend this election year.

In the first half of last year, the two groups backing Obama raised over $5 million which underscores their lackluster results in the second half.

The launch is the Islamic Revolution's latest attempt to reach audiences throughout Latin America and Spain. This follows Ahmadinejad's tour of the region in January, which included stops in Cuba and visits to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador. Iran has signed economic and security agreements, for example, with Venezuela.

The Eurozone is experiencing historic unemployment rates at 10.4 percent in December.  Germany was the only exception, which saw its unemployment rate reduce to 6.7 percent in January.

While the European debt crisis has lingered without resolve, unemployment has become the number one problem among those younger than 25-years-old, with 21.3 percent of those Europeans without jobs.

European leaders met once again with a new theme for their meetings that address unemployment and economic growth -- themes that have been neglected since Europe began austerity programs.

Germany has long argued that budgetary discipline will ultimately help economies grow. Record European unemployment -- 16.4 million in the European monetary zone and 23.8 million within the EU -- has weighed on domestic demand, the engine of growth on the old continent with French and German consumption falling in December, more signs pointing to a worsening economy.

Divorce at a younger age hurts people’s health more than divorce later in life, according to a new study by a Michigan State University sociologist. Hui Liu said the findings, which appear in the research journal Social Science & Medicine, suggest older people have more coping skills to deal with the stress of divorce.
 
“It’s clear to me that we need more social and family support for the younger divorced groups,” said Liu, assistant professor of sociology. “This could include divorce counseling to help people handle the stress, or offering marital therapy or prevention programs to maintain marital satisfaction.” Liu analyzed the self-reported health of 1,282 participants in Americans’ Changing Lives, a long-term national survey. She measured the gap in health status between those who remained married during the 15-year study period and those who transitioned from marriage to divorce, at certain ages and among different birth cohorts, or generations.

Liu found the gap was wider at younger ages. For example, among people born in the 1950s, those who got divorced between the ages of 35 and 41 reported more health problems in relation to their continuously married counterparts than those who got divorced in the 44 to 50 age range.

Last summer, I strolled into a small New York East Side playhouse and sat down to watch Dennis Richard’s play Oswald,a story about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, one of the most dramatic events in the country’s history.  I expected yet another drama filled with forensics investigations, sound analysis, movie clips and extended wild conspiracy theories, like all the others over the years.

Oswald was not like that at all. It was a riveting story about the police investigation of the Kennedy murderer based on the actual notes of Captain Will Fitz, the veteran Dallas police detective who talked to Oswald for most of the two days he was in custody.  The story unfolded from the time of the shooting to the moment Oswald himself was gunned down by Jack Ruby, live, on national television, two days after Kennedy died.

Throughout, Richard built a riveting story and created a devastating character in Lee Harvey Oswald, an angry young man trying to fast talk his way out of the interview. Hour by hour, though, day by day, Captain Fitz built an unassailable case against Oswald.  He proved, without question, based on evidence and eyewitness testimony, that Oswald killed Kennedy.

The beauty of Oswald was that even though you knew how the story ended, you were transfixed by the play.  Now Oswald has re-opened at the Write Act Repertory Theater in Los Angeles for a month-long run.  Its producers have been talking to other theaters across the country about staging the play in 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination that shook the world.  Two screenwriters have talked to Richard about turning the play into a film.

In the opening scene of Red Tails, the new film produced by George Lucas about the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, hundreds of computerized planes emerge on screen in a pitched air battle. The tension-filled battle sequence ends and the action drifts down to the ground, where member of the all-black and very segregated Tuskegee squadrons complain that because of their color the army will not let them fly combat missions. If they could, they tell each other, they would shoot the Nazis out of the sky from one end of Europe to the other.

The plot of the film, an action-packed historical drama that opened last week, flies off from there. Red Tails is a fine movie, but it is a bit simplistic, overly heroic, filled with made-in-Hollywood quotes. It’s (admittedly) yet another updated version of the old wartime action flicks. It’s a film that tells the courageous tale of the black airmen and their two wars—one against the Germans and the other against the racist Army Air Force brass. The film is long on sensational aerial dogfights. Lucas, who gave the world Star Wars (the space battles in the original were based off of aerial combat footage from World War II), is the master of film dogfights. Here, over Italy, American fighter planes zig and zag their way through blue skies, blasting German planes out of the air. The enemy aircraft don’t just fall to earth; they fall with long spirals, smoke billowing from the fuselage and explode in a huge ball of bright orange fire.

Blogging may have psychological benefits for teens suffering from social anxiety, improving their self-esteem and helping them relate better to their friends, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. “Research has shown that writing a personal diary and other forms of expressive writing are a great way to release emotional distress and just feel better,” said the study’s lead author, Meyran Boniel-Nissim, PhD, of the University of Haifa, Israel. “Teens are online anyway, so blogging enables free expression and easy communication with others.”

Maintaining a blog had a stronger positive effect on troubled students’ well-being than merely expressing their social anxieties and concerns in a private diary, according to the article published online in the APA journal Psychological Services. Opening the blog up to comments from the online community intensified those effects. “Although cyberbullying and online abuse are extensive and broad, we noted that almost all responses to our participants’ blog messages were supportive and positive in nature,” said the study’s co-author, Azy Barak, PhD. “We weren’t surprised, as we frequently see positive social expressions online in terms of generosity, support and advice.”

It was a day of terror for Christians at St Joseph University Institute in Anekal, near Bangalore in the Indian state of Karnataka. More than 100 members of radical anti-Christian Hindu groups, assailed the campus on January 30, using as a pretext their belief that India's national flag had not been on display in observance of Republic Day. Members of India's radical Hindu nationalist groups, "Vishwa Hindu Parishad", "Bajrang Dal", "Sakthi Rashtra Sene", and  "Karnataka Rakshana Vedike" were represented among the members of the mob that broke into the university campus and interrupted lessons.

The dean of the institute, Rev. Melwin Mendonca, SJ, reported that students and faculty lived through hours of apprehension during the seige, which showed signs of complicity on the part of local authorities. According to Father Melwin, there were some municipal councilors who joined the mob. In addition, when school administrators called for police protection, it was observed that "the inspector and police officers were spectators of the violence, they even allowed that the unrest on the campus lasted for two hours", according to the dean.

America's strategic interests in Asia go hand in hand with democratic values. Not by accident, all of our formal security allies in Asia -- Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand -- are democracies. And events are trending further in this direction.

Taiwan recently conducted its fifth direct presidential election since 1996, further proof of democracy's hold there. While many Americans may squirm at the "pro-China" characterization given its now two-term president, Ma Ying-jeou, the process that returned him to office is in itself a strategic advantage. Taiwan has one of the most highly polarized electorates in the world. Yet the democratic process has produced a bottom line on the most contentious issue -- Taiwan's relationship with the People's Republic of China.

After days of often bitter campaigning, Republican voters in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida are choosing their favorite candidate to run for president. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney expressed confidence before voting started. The Florida Republican primary election on Tuesday, Jan. 31, comes just over a week after he was soundly defeated in the South Carolina primary.

Strong debate performances and heavy advertising that attacked Romney's top rival - former House speaker Newt Gingrich - helped Romney surge in the polls. Recent opinion polls show Romney has a double-digit lead over Gingrich in Florida. Romney's campaign has taken on a confident tone. Romney told the media that he still has plenty of work cut out for him, especially in convincing conservative Republicans and Tea Party people that he is their man. Gingrich' had contended that Romney is actually a "Massachusetts moderate" who has not supported Republican basics, Romney contends that as governor he cut state spending. 

Regarding to a hot-button issue for conservatives, Romney said he is a convert as to abortion. "I was in a state where being a social conservative was not easy," he said, recounting how he changed his views on abortion as he considered a bill on embryonic stem cell research. "When people go out and say things about my record that aren't accurate, why, that would create an impression that I have to work hard to correct."

A mutant protein found in nearly all pancreatic cancers plays a role not only in the cancer’s development but in its continued growth, according to a new study from University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers. The finding suggests a possible target for developing new ways to treat this deadly disease. Researchers have known that mutations in the Kras gene are what cause pancreatic cancer to develop. These mutations are frequently seen in common precancerous lesions, suggesting it has an early role in pancreatic cancer.

The new study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, finds that in mice, mutant Kras also keeps the tumor growing and helps precancerous tumors grow into invasive cancer. When the researchers turned off Kras, the tumors disappeared and showed no signs of recurring.

A new University of Michigan computer model of disease transmission in space and time can predict cholera outbreaks in Bangladesh up to 11 months in advance, providing an early warning system that could help public health officials there. The new forecast model applies specifically to the capital city of Dhaka and incorporates data on both year-to-year climate variability and the spatial location of cholera cases at the district level. This allowed the researchers to study both local variation in disease transmission and response to climate factors within the megacity of 14 million people.

U-M theoretical ecologists Mercedes Pascual and Aaron King, along with former U-M postdoctoral researcher Robert Reiner and other colleagues, found evidence for a climate-sensitive urban core in Dhaka that acts to propagate cholera risk to the rest of the city. By including those findings in their model, the researchers were able to increase its accuracy and extend its forecasting ability far beyond previous disease models for the city. Earlier models had prediction lead times of a month or less—too short to be of use in an early warning systems. The longer lead time of the new model will help inform decisions about treatment preparedness, vaccination and other disease-prevention strategies.

Amid new strains in U.S.-Egypt ties, some in Washington are studying the tensions and results of recent voting for indications that democracy can take hold. Those who say the Muslim Brotherhood is showing new signs of moderation should compare its messages to outsiders, in English, with its message to Egyptians and other Arabs, in Arabic.

Take the Brotherhood’s official English and Arabic Web sites, IkhwanWeb and IkhwanOnline, from one day this month. In English, the home page featured no fewer than eight articles on the solicitude of the Brotherhood toward Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority.

The Arabic home page, by contrast, included just two small pieces on this theme. The contrast is sharper on other key issues. On democracy, the English home page one January day featured several articles with headlines such as “Why Islamists Are Better Democrats” and “Democracy: One of the Objectives of Shariah?” There was nothing comparable in Arabic. Instead, Arabic readers saw three pieces against freedom of the press, attacking two top independent Egyptian dailies for printing criticisms of the Brotherhood.