Finally, after a 22-day assault in which more than 1,200 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed, there is some hope for Gaza. Facing demands for war crimes investigations, Israel declared last night an unilateral ceasefire. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday President Bush made his farewell to the country. Today with his family and some loyal members of his administration he is retiring to Camp David where he will spend the last days of his presidency away from the public eye until he appears at his successor’s inauguration. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten years ago Europe’s newest single currency, the Euro, began trading. It was its start as a global financial power and it took three more years for the simultaneous conversion of eleven European currencies into euro notes and coins. Read the rest of this entry »

After relatively mild weather during the Christmas holidays, winter has come in full force to Europe. It has brought strange sights such as the port in Marseille covered in snow! In a normally sunny French Riviera trains are halted and people are wary of venturing outside their homes. In my case I am having fond memories of my home in Florida… Read the rest of this entry »

The silence of President-elect Barack Obama on the subject of Israel’s war against Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip is only partly out of deference to Bush who still is the country’s president for two more weeks. Whenever Obama does not want to respond to something the mantra of his advisers is always “the fact is that there is only one president …” and yet on December 26, 2008. Obama did not hesitate to state his opinions about the attacks in Mumbai. Read the rest of this entry »

For many years Cuba has been for me a difficult subject to write about being divided by what I perceived about social gains among the Cuban population and my intense disliked for any government which took away political freedom from its people. Read the rest of this entry »