Iran to send envoy to U.S.-backed Afghanistan summit

Iran will send an envoy to a U.S.-backed international conference on Afghanistan, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported Thursday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will represent the United States at the United Nations meeting Tuesday in The Hague, the State Department said earlier

Are U.S. Missile Defenses Geared for the Wrong Missiles?

More than 25 years and $100 billion ago, Ronald Reagan ordered the Pentagon build a system to “intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil.” This week, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs said there wasn’t much point.

Senators: Obama border initiative good step, but insufficient

The Obama administration’s initiative to deploy additional federal resources in the fight against rising drug-related violence along the Mexican border was criticized as insufficient in a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. The administration’s plan to send hundreds of extra federal agents and new crime-fighting equipment to the border “represents a significant step forward” but is not enough, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, said

Obama’s ‘Trade War’: No Truck with Mexico

The U.S. press has given the flare-up an ascending series of alarming descriptions: “a dispute that could lead to a trade war”; a “mini trade war”; and the full, flaming “Obama’s first trade war.” This month’s ban on Mexican truckers operating in U.S

Obama calls for global economic cooperation

President Obama reached out to citizens of the world Tuesday, saying in an op-ed piece that ran in 31 newspapers around the globe that there is an urgent need for worldwide economic cooperation. Obama’s move comes ahead of next week’s Group of 20 meeting in London, England, in which leaders of the world’s richest nations will discuss the global economic downturn. “My message is clear,” Obama wrote

Obama highlights need for more clean-energy funding

President Obama turned his attention to the need for more clean-energy funding Monday, arguing that an expanded investment is needed to lay the foundation for long-term economic growth, cut dependence on foreign oil and slow the process of global warming. Obama, speaking to a group of renewable-energy company owners and investors, said the country has “known the right choice for a generation (and that) the time has come to make that choice.” In the years ahead, the United States “can remain the world’s leading importer of foreign oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy,” Obama argued. “We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worse effects