An alarming find in Las Vegas puts a toxin back on the map.
Ricin is back in the headlines. Several vials of the deadly toxin turned up last week in a Las Vegas hotel room, along with firearms, a text book about anarchy, and castor seeds, which are used to make the poison. The room’s occupant, [...]

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Many in Israel believe the 2006 war with Lebanon was ended prematurely and the country left with unfinished business. Israel’s 500-page Winograd report was particularly scathing about the performance of Israel “Defence” Forces, while hawks worry that Israel’s strategic usefulness to Washington has been eroded by the last military failure.
Hezbollah certainly thinks there’s something in [...]

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That Canberra runs an imperial network is unmentionable, yet the chain of control stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the South Pacific
That Australia runs its own empire is unmentionable; yet it stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the ancient hinterlands of the continent and across the Arafura Sea and the South [...]

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The escalating crisis between Colombia and its neighbors is more than just a case of Andean road rage. It exposes volatile political fault lines not seen in the Americas in a generation. On one side stand President Bush and regional allies led by conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whose army is accused of invading Ecuador [...]

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Asked if the Chinese are monitoring the buildup, Keating said: “I kind of hope they do. We’ve got a number of B-2s in Guam now. I’m hoping they notice. We’re doing our best to make sure they do. We want them to understand that we’re going to continue to course around the Pacific in ways [...]

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Defense-related think tanks and contractors, as well as the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, were the target of repeated computer network intrusions last year apparently originating in China, the Department of Defense said this week. In its annual report to lawmakers on China’s military power, the department said the intrusions “appeared to originate in” China [...]

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Marked for death, his life will never be the same. He and his wife move constantly under police guard. Kurt Westergaard did what he was told: he drew a cartoon of Mohammed for his employer, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. He had no idea that by doing so he would have to spend the rest of [...]

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Entrepreneurs in Brazil – A different kind of risk-taking
SETTLE down at one of São Paulo’s sushi bars and before long you will overhear a discussion about a start-up business making energy from obscure weeds, or some other bright idea for relieving members of the country’s growing middle class of their disposable income. A field study [...]

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Bloodshed in Armenia worries both Russia and the West
THE day after Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential victory, Moscow’s leading papers turned their attention away from the long-predicted result to the unexpected bloodshed in Armenia. At least eight people were killed in clashes between security forces and opposition supporters protesting against alleged fraud in the country’s presidential elections. [...]

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DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that Israel’s security cabinet approved Wednesday, March 5, a series of terrorist targets for early attacks as part of a sustained military offensive against escalated Palestinian attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians.
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