Current affairs

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

WASHINGTON, DC - The financial crisis that began in 2007 has been persistently marked by muddled thinking and haphazard policymaking. Now, the United States Treasury is headed for a mistake of historic and catastrophic proportions by refusing to bail out America's Big Three automakers.

Haven't we seen this before? As Chrysler, Ford Motors and General Motors beg both the Bush administration and the transitional team of President elect Barack Obama to relieve them of financial woes, the similarities with the late 1970s can't be ignored.

There is an old cliché which says that the victors write history.

One of the most important changes envisaged by the Barack Obama administration will be new and softer ways to deploy American influence abroad. Eight years of hubris under George W. Bush has taken its toll, as the failed "Freedom Agenda" drove the U.S.

Decline-o-mania is back! Talk of America's diminished weight, a "non-polar world" and the rise of Asia's new superpowers to overtake the West dominates political and academic debate on both sides of the Atlantic.

After eight years of misguided policy by the Bush administration in the Middle East, the time is overdue for an enlightened strategy to tackle the region's woes.

NEW HAVEN - The world's fundamental economic problem today is a staggering loss of business confidence.

Quite suddenly, everyone has started looking at maps again. With energy prices spiralling out of control - and energy producing countries growing in confidence as a result - the great game of geopolitics has made a dramatic and unwelcome return.

The growing speculation, fed by the musings of Vice President Elect Joseph Biden, that the incoming Obama Administration would shortly face a nice, neat - if painful - "generated" test of its abilities and its courage is not likely.

NEW YORK - The world is sinking into a major global slowdown, likely to be the worst in a quarter-century, perhaps since the Great Depression. This crisis was "made in America," in more than one sense.

Europeans breathed a sigh of relief at the election of Democrat Barack Obama as the first black U.S. president, ending eight years of growing anxiety over the veiled unilateralism of George W. Bush's administration.

The Niger government has been found guilty of an embarrassing failure to protect an individual from the insidious practice of slavery.

NAIROBI - As a child in rural Kenya, I was a secret admirer of female genital mutilation. I was swayed by talk of friends and elders about how once a girl undergoes "the cut," she gains respect and grown men consider her suitable for marriage.

As senator Obama is heading for his election victory, the expectations for him in Europe could not possibly be more unrealistic and without foundation.