President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the United States and Cuba would restore full diplomatic relations and reopen their respective embassies in Washington, D.C. and Havana on July 20—a move he said would begin “a new chapter with our neighbors in the Americas.” “We don’t have to be imprisoned by the past,” Obama said in…
Tensions between China and United States continue to rise over the South China Sea as a Chinese government newspaper warns that war may be ‘inevitable’ if the U.S. and its allies do not back off from the heavily disputed territory. Last week, the Chinese government condemned the actions of the U.S. military after the P8-A…
U.S. President Barack Obama intends to remove Cuba from the American government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, news outlets reported Tuesday afternoon. The news came after a much-anticipated meeting between Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro during last weekend’s Summit of the Americas meeting in Panama, the first such formal session between leaders of…
The foreign ministers of the United States, the UK, Russia, China, France, plus Germany (known as the P5 + 1 nations) came to an agreement with Iran on Thursday over that country’s nuclear program. The framework — which will be finalized in June — settles key questions over Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, the status…
The U.S. is slowing down its withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite long-held promises that the military would be out of the country by 2016, new Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on Saturday. Carter told reporters in Kabul that the Obama administration is “rethinking” its counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan and that the U.S. military wants to ensure…
The United States economy last year experienced the strongest job growth since 1999 with nearly 3 million jobs created in 2014. New government data shows that the economy added 252,000 jobs in December. That helped the unemployment rate dip to 5.6 percent, down from 6.6 percent in January 2014. The unemployment rate is at its…
With Congress on the verge of taking up the controversial, corporate-friendly Trans Pacific Partnership, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is demanding that the chief trade representative for the United States turn over the full text of the proposed trade agreement. “It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests who stand to…
A monstrous cloud of accumulated methane—a potent greenhouse gas—is now hovering over a large portion of the western United States according to satellite imagery analyzed by NASA and reported by the Washington Post. Created by years of intentionally released and errantly leaked natural gas during fossil fuel drilling operations, the cloud — invisible to the…
With little fanfare, the United States and NATO formally ended the longest war in U.S. history with a ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan on Sunday, leaving observers to wonder what — if anything — was achieved. Over 13 years, U.S.-led war in Afghanistan claimed the lives of about 3,500 foreign troops (at least 2,224 of them…
Senator Joe Donnelly is calling for more bipartisanship in the United States Senate. The senator joined more than 30 of his colleagues in urging Democratic leader Harry Reid and Republican leader Mitch McConnell to host monthly lunches between the two party caucuses to help “build stronger and more productive relationships among all members of the…
