Experts tell us the North American shale oil boom is responsible for low prices despite Middle East unrest. But the price slump serves Western aims of weakening Russia and Iran.
The Russian policy establishment is hypothesizing an ISIS hand in the bloody attack by Chechen insurgents in Grozny—and implying that the West is in turn behind ISIS. (Map via La Croix International)
With work about to begin on an inter-oceanic canal through Nicaragua, campesinos who stand to be evicted for the mega-scheme pledge resistance and warn of a "massacre."
An alarming confrontation between Turkish and Russian warplanes over the Black Sea ironically comes as both Ankara and Moscow seek to divide Kurds from the Syrian rebels.
Crimean Tatars pledge to resist Russian demands that they register their Majlis as a "civic organization" and surrender "forbidden" Islamic literature.
Fortune magazine issued a list of the biggest organized crime groups in the world: elements of Japan's Yakuza, Russian mafia, two Italian syndicates and Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel.
In a little-noted irony, as Vladiimir Putin backs the "People's Republics" in eastern Ukraine, he has cracked down on a separatist movement that has emerged in Siberia.
China's participation in the Paris summit on building an international effort against ISIS comes as Uighur militants were detained on suspicion of recruiting for the "Islamic State."
Crimean Tatar leaders, forced into exile by Russian judicial orders, accuse Moscow of a campaign of raids and harassment aimed at driving Tatars from the peninsula.
Putin's political machine convened an "anti-fascist" summit at Yalta in annexed Crimea, attended by Hungary's Jobbik party, the British Nationalist Party and other neo-fascist entities.
At the NATO summit called in response to the Ukraine escalation, a particularly hard line is being taken by Canada—now in a race with Russia to claim Arctic oil resources.
Five large non-Western economies are planning a new development bank, but activists say the bank's impact will depend on the ability of the countries' populations to mobilize.
