History Readings

In the years I was assigned to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or Fincen, I observed many formal requests for assistance having to do with companies associated with Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. These states have a tawdry image: they have become nearly synonymous with underground financing, tax evasion and other bad deeds facilitated by anonymous shell companies

A study by researchers at Brigham Young University, the University of Texas and Griffith University in Australia concluded that America was the second easiest country, after Kenya, in which to incorporate a shell company.

A recent World Bank study found that the United States was the favored destination for corrupt foreign politicians opening phantom companies to conceal their ill-gotten gains.

“So, you want to be a dictator?”

Too bad you’re living in this century. “It is tougher to lead an authoritarian regime in the face of democratic ideals, free speech and globalized media.

Snyderwine puts forth complex mathematical formulas that show a dictator how to stay in power with cost-benefit analyses of revolutions that take into account factors like bribes and the number of active revolutionaries killed.

Twitter finally eclipsed Facebook as the most popular social network for teens, according to a recent Piper Jaffray study. Among young people, Zuckerberg's site is now tied with Instagram (his $1 billion purchase) for second place, having crashed from a huge lead last year.

31 October 2013 Last updated at 19:42 ET Share this page Email Print Share this page2.6KShareFacebookTwitter Syria chemical weapons equipment destroyed, says OPCW Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); Jerry Smith, OPCW: "We have... observed all of the destruction activities" Continue reading the main story Syria conflict Arms destruction Chemical stockpile 'Please let it be over' Assad opponents Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says. This comes a day before the deadline set by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The weapons have been placed under seal, an OPCW spokesman said. Inspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas. Continue reading the main story Analysis Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent The achievement of this crucial initial target is an important moment for the chemical weapons destruction effort in Syria. The inspectors' first task was to move swiftly to prevent the government from producing any more chemical agent and to destroy facilities and equipment used for mixing agents and filling munitions. Production facilities will be closely monitored to ensure that there are no moves to repair them. The next deadline is mid-November, by which time the OPCW and the Syrians must agree a detailed plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. All sorts of questions are raised. Where will this destruction be carried out ? Who will provide the necessary equipment and so on? Western intelligence agencies will be studying Syria's declarations carefully. They will be eager to direct inspectors to additional locations if there are any grounds to believe that Damascus has been less than frank in its disclosures. The inspections were agreed between Russia and the US after Washington threatened to use force in Syria. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad

Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says.

nspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas.

conservatism in its best sense is about the constant situating of the individual within a cultural and historical context.

Individualism can never therefore be an ideology. “I built that” is an excrescent simplification, a form of contempt for tradition and society.

the key to a more productively conservative defense of tradition is, it seems to me, a civility in making the case and an alertness to the occasional, contingent need for genuine reform, as social problems emerge in a changing society.

on the Facebook page for applicants to a special American visa program. In this case, however, the man in the photograph couldn’t be described that way because his head had been cut off and placed on the small of his back so that his lifeless eyes stared at the camera. He had been an interpreter for United States Marines advising the Afghan Border Police in 2010, which is presumably why insurgents made an example of him. I don’t know his story, but I can tell you Amin’s.

Amin didn’t simply assist my platoon; he was central to our effort. In a complex political environment that Marine battalions rotated through every six months, he was the constant — the face that local leaders remembered each time new Marines arrived, and the expert on a complicated web of interpersonal relationships among Afghan soldiers, police, politicians and elders.

Today, a year and four months after I sent the first e-mail, Amin is still waiting to schedule medical exams and a final security interview at the United States Embassy in Kabul. He continues to work in the relative safety of an American military base, but as the draw-down continues, he will eventually be left to fend for himself.

A railway tunnel underneath the Bosphorus Strait has been opened in Turkey, creating a new link between the Asian and European shores of Istanbul.

Japan invested $1bn of the $4bn (£3.4bn) total cost of the project, named Marmaray,

In theory it brings closer the day when it will be possible to travel from London to Beijing via Istanbul by train.

Four French hostages kidnapped in Niger in 2010 have been released, France's President Hollande has announced.

"I have some good news. I just learned from Niger's president that our four hostages in the Sahel, the Arlit hostages, have been released."

They were all employees at the uranium mine run by the French nuclear company Areva.

Thousands of Syrian civilians have finally been allowed to leave the besieged Damascus suburb of Moadamiya.

The exodus of civilians has been made possible by an apparent relaxation of a blockade by government forces.

The situation has become so desperate that earlier this month Muslim clerics issued a religious ruling allowing people to eat cats, dogs and donkeys just to survive.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said such efforts were a "top tenet" of US intelligence policy.

House of Representatives the US did not "indiscriminately" spy on nations.

"Leadership intentions is kind of a basic tenet of what we collect and analyse

a speech this month by a Stanford University lecturer and entrepreneur named Balaji S. Srinivasan. The speech gained attention in technology circles. But it deserves a wider audience, because it was an unusually honest articulation of ideas that are common among members of a digital overclass whose decisions shape ever more of our lives.

told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become “the Microsoft of nations”: outdated and obsolescent. When technology companies calcify, Mr. Srinivasan said, you don’t reform them. You exit and launch your own. Why not do so with America?

In practice, this vision calls for building actual communities that would be beyond the reach of the state that Silicon Valley’s libertarians despise. But in the near term, Mr. Srinivasan noted, there are piecemeal ways to opt out of the society — like spending unregulated digital currency, sleeping in unregulated hotels and manufacturing unregulated guns. What Mr. Srinivasan called “Silicon Valley’s ultimate exit,” he explained, “basically means build an opt-in society, ultimately outside the United States, run by technology.”

One of the company’s most compelling arguments for its quest to spread GMOs is that Monsanto products are the solution to world hunger

The company’s defenders claim that opposing GMOs is a luxury of Western privilege that denies developing countries vital resources to feed impoverished communities

According to Food Sovereignty Ghana, seven African countries held anti-Monsanto rallies on Saturday

The chief of the US spy agency NSA has not discussed the alleged bugging of German chancellor's phone with President Barack Obama, officials say.

A report in German tabloid Bild am Sonntag claimed that Gen Alexander had told the president about the bugging himself.

"[General] Alexander did not discuss with President Obama in 2010 an alleged foreign intelligence operation involving German Chancellor Merkel, nor has he ever discussed alleged operations involving Chancellor Merkel," NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said.

Less than two weeks after they seized the city, the rebels withdrew, the result of heavy international pressure, doubts about whether they could hold and administer a major city and the promise of negotiations with the government. They left waves of assassinations and disappearances, lootings and carjackings in their wake.

Many analysts say that the mandate has always given peacekeepers the authority to use deadly force to protect civilians, and that what was needed were more aggressive commanders.

“There does seem to be a determination to get the job done that wasn’t there before,” Mr. Stearns said. “But this is just one victory really. Let’s see what happens next time.”

Still, the battle was a dramatic turnaround from barely a year ago, when the rebels had the upper hand. Ill-disciplined, corrupt and often drunk, the Congolese soldiers were only somewhat more popular than the mutineer rebels who had taken up arms against them.

Last fall, after the rebels briefly overran Goma, the regional capital and a city of one million people, the United Nations peacekeeping forces here were exposed as little more than blue-helmeted mannequins.

Last week, the negotiations broke down and fighting resumed. A spokesman for M23 said the Congolese military had started the latest round of fighting, but General Bahuma said they were only responding to a rebel attack.

Critics say the retooled policy will not shield the United States from the hazards of the Middle East. By holding back, they say, the United States risks being buffeted by crisis after crisis, as the president’s fraught history with Syria illustrates.

“You can have your agenda, but you can’t control what happens,”

Egypt is still the test case of whether there can be a peaceful political transition in the Arab world

The United States, he declared, would focus on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria. Everything else would take a back seat.

The president’s goal, said Ms. Rice, who discussed the review for the first time in an interview last week, is to avoid having events in the Middle East swallow his foreign policy agenda, as it had those of presidents before him.

“We can’t just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is,” she said, adding, “He thought it was a good time to step back and reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive the region.”

Fresh reports in German media based on leaked US intelligence documents are prompting damaging new questions about the extent of US surveillance.

Another report says Mr Obama was told in 2010 about the surveillance and failed to stop it.

The spy row has led to the worst diplomatic crisis betweeen the two countries in living memory.