A taped conversation shows that in early 2011 Murdoch sent Roger Ailes, the boss of his most important US media outlet, Fox News, to Afghanistan to persuade Gen David Petraeus, former commander of US forces, to run against Barack Obama as the Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Murdoch promised to bankroll Petraeus’ campaign and commit Fox News to provide the general with wall

Why did the invasion of Iraq result in cultural destruction and killings of intellectuals? Convention sees accidents of war and poor planning in a campaign to liberate Iraqis. The authors argue instead that the invasion aimed to dismantle the Iraqi state to remake it as a client regime. Post-invasion chaos created conditions under which the cultural foundations of the state could be undermined. T

It’s a serious question. On the basis of fundamentals, the race should be a squeaker. The Yale economist Ray Fair’s prediction model, which ignores the opinion polls and just looks at economic factors, currently puts Obama’s share of the popular vote at 49.5 per cent, implying that Romney would almost certainly get a narrow majority in the electoral college and win the election. Because the margi

Many people are saying that Bashar is in a bubble. By this they are insisting that his victory speech is bluster or based on bad intelligence and fawning officers who give him only good news. Certainly, he is in a bubble. But it is a mistake to overestimate the power of the rebels. They too have been in a bubble. They have thought that this was going to be much easier from the beginning – that Ba

On Monday morning, Grand Central Publishing will release Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story, a memoir penned by former Goldman employee Greg Smith, based on his op-ed for the New York Times entitled, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.” When Smith’s piece came out last March, few if any senior executives inside the bank were pleased, in part because it came as a total shock. No one at Gol

"People just want a different style of government."

How-to-vote cards normally consigned to the rubbish bin on election days were instead being kept as a memento of the historic occasion as residents swamped 17 polling booths across the former Noosa Shire area, with "Yes Vote" volunteers out numbering their "No" rivals 10 to one.

Cards handed out directly countered Queensland Treasury Corpo

Australia's treatment of refugees and Aboriginal people has received scathing criticism in a report by human rights organisation Amnesty International.

In its annual review of global human rights violations, released yesterday, Amnesty singled out Australia for the mandatory and indefinite detention of asylum-seekers and for continuing to "violate the rights" of its indigenous people.

Abori

"Peace in Syria could be saved if everyone told the truth. After a year of conflict, the reality on the ground is far from the picture that imposes disinformation in Western media": says a testimony sent to Fides Agency by the French Bishop Philip Tournyol Clos, a greek-Catholic Melkite Archimandrite, who recently visited Syria, by traveling to different cities, like Damascus, Aleppo and Homs.

2012 will remain a very bad year for real estate professionals. In this comprehensive figures on the property market in November 2012, discover the sharp decline in real estate sales in Paris and Ile-de-France, the figures very bad housing, the amount of sales that fall on the implementation updates Friggit curves , the increase in VAT in the building in 2014, the continued decline in real rates

SecondMarket Holdings, the private-market securities trading firm best known for allowing numerous overzealous fans to buy FaceBook at moronic valuations, on Monday "will roll out a platform allowing lenders to issue securities backed by student loans directly to investors."

Why is SecondMarket doing this? The same reason Lloyd Blankfein was selling Abacus (and all those other synthetic MBS CD

The Guardian's description of Australia's opposition leader Tony Abbott as "neanderthal" is not unreasonable. Misogyny is an Australian blight and a craven reality in political life. But for so many commentators around the world to describe Julia Gillard's attack on Abbott as a "turning point for Australian women" is absurd. Promoted by glass-ceiling feminists with scant interest in the actual po

Violent protests in Libya that claimed the life of the U.S. ambassador were the result of President Obama’s decision to intervene in the Libyan revolt without a “deep appreciation” for what would follow, former CIA Director Michael Hayden tells Newsmax.

Hayden, a former four-star Air Force general, was appointed CIA director by President George W. Bush in 2006 and served until 2009.

In an e

By most accounts, unemployment is one of the greatest challenges facing Nigeria.

Observers say that the socio-economic problem is compounded by the fact that several thousands of jobless youths have been forced into crime because of idleness.

They, nonetheless, contend that while there are no justifiable reasons for anyone to take to crime because of unemployment, the negative effects of un

We sought to rise above the fray and just define what a good education looks like these days: What are the best schools in any county doing? What defines them? And we found four things: They invest in teaching as a career. They really prize having high-quality teachers in every single classroom. They give kids more time and ways to learn. Extend the school day, extend the school year, but you als

The days are still warm across the fertile plains of northern Syria around Aleppo, but night brings a chill – an ominous harbinger of winter’s approach and the deepening of the already severe humanitarian crisis gripping a country wracked by civil war. Warm temperatures and plentiful food have cushioned the blow somewhat for hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced from their homes or living in