24 December 2011 This month marks the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1988, I saw the surest sign the USSR was facing an earthquake when I became the first western journalist to be invited into KGB’s Moscow headquarters, the Lubyanka Prison. Moscovites were so terrified […]

19 December 2011 The death last weekend of North Korea’s `Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-il presents many dangers, but also some hopes for lower tensions on the strategic peninsula. Kim’s death was not unexpected. He had been seriously ill with diabetes and cardiac problems that led to a stroke in 2008. […]

December 16, 2011 British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent veto of a stronger European monetary union should not have surprised anyone familiar with British history. Cameron, cheered on by the powerful anti-Europe wing of his Conservative Party, thwarted intense efforts to create a super-European fiscal authority to prevent the unraveling […]