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Only by overlooking important forces in markets and politics can anyone assert that Saudi Arabia is letting crude prices fall mainly to extinguish competition from North American shale oil. With oil, the Saudi regime always takes the long view. With security, however, its motivations are more immediate. The kingdom faces unusually intense threats: Islamic State (IS) militancy in Iraq and Syria, the chance that Iran won’t agree by a Nov. 24 deadline to suspend its nuclear ambitions, terrorist insurrections from restive Yemen, durability of the menacing government of Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus. Falling oil prices hurt the IS and Iran,...

At the U.N. General Assembly in New York last September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set aside time for a critical meeting. But it wasn't President Barack Obama he was keen to see. It was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Since Modi came to power in May, ties between Israel and India have been in overdrive, with the two signing a series of defence and technology deals that have underscored their burgeoning commercial and political relationship. The same month as the UN meeting, Modi's cabinet cleared a long-delayed purchase of Israeli missiles for its navy. In October, India closed a...

"I do not care how the Springboks team does. It is not a reflection of the nation. It is not our team. I support the All Blacks instead. We don't support the national team, because it is a white South African team. It is not a true South African team." Where would you date that sentiment from Zola Ntlokoma, secretary of Soweto Rugby Club? Autumn 1986, when a rebel New Zealand team broke the sporting boycott to tour apartheid-era South Africa? June 1995, when the Springboks met All Blacks in the first World Cup final after Nelson Mandela's release from...

Johannesburg, South Africa - Linda Elfs, 58, spends eight hours at a street corner in Harteebesport dam, a small tourist town in the North West Province of South Africa, begging for money. She is too young to get state pension and "too old to be hired", she says. A former nurse and bartender, she joined the ranks of the unemployed white South Africans eight years ago, and life has since become a struggle. "On a good day I make R400.00 ($37.57), which is not enough to pay for rent or food," Elfs says.

A veteran State Department diplomat and longtime Pakistan expert is under federal investigation as part of a counterintelligence probe and has had her security clearances withdrawn, according to U.S. officials. The FBI searched the Northwest Washington home of Robin L. Raphel last month, and her State Department office was also examined and sealed, officials said. Raphel, a fixture in Washington’s diplomatic and think-tank circles, was placed on administrative leave last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week. Two U.S. officials described the investigation as a counterintelligence matter, which typically involves allegations of spying...

1994 ought to have brought freedom entirely, but that never happened. We never got Polygamy freedom. President Zuma has indeed proven that Polygamy can be practised in South Africa. President Zuma has been married at least five times. We now have to ask why South Africans opted to have selective freedom? Marriage can be by capture, by purchase or by choice. Obviously the majority would agree with me that marriage by choice is the favorable, however some broke men would definitely opt for Marriage by capture. Why would the majority opt for Marriage by choice, obviously they can easily hide...

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

NEW DELHI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Indian Border Security Force (BSF) troopers were put on high alert Sunday evening along the India- Pakistan international border after a massive blast left over 45 people dead and over 70 others injured at Wagah border check point in Pakistan, said local media. The Indo-Asian News Service quoted BSF officials at Attari border next to Wagah in Punjab as saying the blast, triggered by an alleged suicide bomber, was heard at a distance of nearly two km. The blast, according to information obtained by the BSF, occurred close to the place where the retreat...

US tells India, drop dead March 28, 2005 A friend, usually upbeat about India-US relations, sent me an angry mail over the weekend after President George Bush called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the evening of March 25 to inform him that the US had decided to supply F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview to The Washington Post, "dismissed concerns" about the fallout of the American decision. The mail reads: "lovely easter gift to india from the us. moral: proliferate nukes, threaten us interests everywhere, be terror hub, and get rewarded...

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century. Mr Putin's annual state of the nation address to parliament was broadcast live on Russian television. He said the break-up of the USSR in 1991 was "a real drama" which left tens of millions of Russians outside the Russian Federation. He also said Russia must develop as a "free and democratic" country. But he stressed that Russia "will decide for itself the pace, terms and conditions of moving towards democracy". "We are a free nation and our place...

LONDON -- In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao stood together in the State Guest House in Beijing while their respective foreign secretaries signed an historic agreement defining the two countries' common 4,374-km border for the first time. The border was an issue over which several battles had been fought in the past. It took a while to close the deal because of disagreement over a few islands in the Amur, Ussuri and Argun rivers, which make up China's northwest border with Russia. Nobody spoiled the party by pointing out that this border is between Inner...

Defensive Visit to India Russian President Vladimir Putin began a visit to India yesterday. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov was especially interested in several intrigues in Russian-Indian relations, but none of them went beyond the bounds of that. There were several intrigues surrounding the arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Indian capital of Delhi. I was interested in whether or not the Indians had signed an agreement on participation in the creation of a fifth generation of heavy fighter plane. I was truly interested. I couldn't rest until I found out why a country that had recovered its...

It seems that Putin's visit to China at the end of May has brought the two countries closer. Russia will not only sell natural gas to China but provide certain military technology support. Meanwhile, China is going to invest in Russia Ironically, last autumn husbands of Chinese vegetable farmers were brutally expelled from southern Russia. Scholars pointed out that a series of anti-Chinese incidents that took place in Russia have reflected the real relationship between China and Russia. After Putin's visit to China, Russians seem very enthusiastic about China. The media keep tracking whether or not China will invest in...

PARIS (by columnist Angela Charlton for RIA Novosti) - Just as President Vladimir Putin risked becoming an international outcast, he launched two diplomatic sorties that stroked Russia's ego and offered him respite from a Ukraine-obsessed season. Over the weekend, Putin bolstered Russia's alliance with democratic, dynamic India, the number one buyer of Russian arms. Then Putin forayed into Turkey, rigorously trying to persuade Russia's longtime foe that cooperation would make both countries richer and safer. Last month he was in Brazil; in October he toured China. Putin is scoring points with the next generation's global heavyweights. Yet his revived rhetoric...

This should be a wake-up call to Europe, long accustomed to living under the U.S. defense umbrella, to take more responsibility for its own defense. So far this year, NATO jets have had to scramble 100 times to intercept these airspace intruders just to show that the West's perimeters are still protected. That's three times as many as intercepted in 2013. It also coincides with a strange submarine incursion in Swedish waters, believed to have been Russian. There's no doubt about it, Russia wants its Cold War empire back, and a complacent, "Finlandized" Europe. Vladimir Putin continues in his quest...

New Delhi, Oct.18 (ANI): Indirectly expressing his country's surprise over the Indian Government and its defence establishment's decision to go ahead with its reported plan to buy 126 Rafale combat aircraft from France, Russia's Ambassador to India, Alexander M. Kadakin, said the Dassault Aviation-manufactured fighter aircraft could be shot down like a mosquito by a Chinese-manufactured or produced Sukhoi jet should there ever be a conflict in the neighbourhood. Ambassador Kadakin, who was attending an interaction between Russian and Indian journalists in the national capital yesterday, said, "We (Russia) are still very surprised that Rafale is being bought, because if...

Investors are losing interest in Brazil's oil industry as the country's energy policies raise costs, reduce efficiency and increase risk, Brazil's oil industry association, the IBP, said on Monday. Without changes Brazil will likely lose out to places such as Mexico, Iran, Iraq and Algeria where policies are becoming more open to private sector investment. "I went to the three largest oil conventions in the world this year and you hardly heard Brazil's name mentioned," Milton Costa Filho, Executive Secretary of the IBP told reporters at an industry event in Rio de Janeiro. "Brazil is falling off the world oil...

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The goalkeeper and captain of South Africa's national soccer team was fatally shot when armed men broke into the house where he was staying, police said Monday. Senzo Meyiwa was killed Sunday after two gunmen entered a house in Vosloorus township near Johannesburg while an accomplice waited outside, the national police force said on its Twitter account. The three assailants then fled, according to the police service, which offered a reward of nearly $14,000 for information leading to arrests in the case. South African soccer club Orlando Pirates confirmed Meyiwa's death, saying in a statement that it...

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel took another step into open antisemitism today when student activists in South Africa placed the severed head of a pig in the kosher meat section of a Woolworths store in Cape Town. The shocking gesture was aimed, the perpetrators said, at preventing “people who will not eat pork to pretend that they are eating clean meat, when it is sold by hands dripping with the blood of Palestinian children.” Jewish leaders were quick to condemn the act, organized by the Congress of South African Students (COSAS,) a body affiliated with the...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcEL-NlxBk0There is widespread allegation -- really a slander -- that Israel is an apartheid state. That notion is simply wrong. It is inaccurate and it is malicious. And it will not help to promote peace and harmony in the Middle East. Its only purpose is to demonize Israel, and to isolate her in an attempt to de-legitimize Israel's existence. And because it is so inaccurate, it betrays the memory of those who suffered through a real apartheid. As a black South African, who was born under apartheid, in the administrative capital of South Africa, Pretoria, I know what apartheid is....