News stories by Analysis by John Feffer

WASHINGTON, Nov 11 (IPS) - Environmental problems, by their nature, don't respect borders. Air and sea pollution often affect countries that had nothing to do with their production. Many extreme weather events, like typhoons, strike more than one country. Climate change affects everyone.

WASHINGTON, Sep 08 (IPS) - The NATO summit that took place at the end of last week in Wales was supposed to celebrate the end of a long, draining war in Afghanistan. But with the presidential election still up in the air in Kabul, NATO couldn't enjoy its "mission accomplished" moment.

In early February, Iran launched its third successful commercial satellite in three years. The Barack Obama administration, the United Nations, and the news media barely acknowledged the accomplishment. North Korea, on the other hand, has created a furor each of the three times its satellites failed to reach orbit.

The geopolitical centre of gravity, as measured in arms spending and transfers, has shifted to Asia.

When Hu Jintao took over as the leader of China in 2002, U.S. companies welcomed his accession as a 'good sign for American business'.' Political analysts described Hu as a member of the fourth generation of Communist party leadership who might very well turn out to be a 'closet liberal'.

For the last two decades, U.S. administrations have come in like a lion and out like a lamb with their policies on North Korea. Determined to demonstrate Washington's resolve, U.S. presidents have played hardball with Pyongyang in an effort to precipitate regime change or at least bully the intransigent country into knuckling under.

President Barack Obama intended to use the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting last weekend in Hawai'i to signal a shift in U.S. foreign policy away from the Middle East and toward the Asia-Pacific region.

If the Obama administration needed a rogue nation to demonstrate its foreign policy resolve, central casting couldn’t have supplied a better candidate than North Korea. The government in Pyongyang routinely promises to unleash destruction of biblical proportions on its enemies. It has pulled out of international agreements, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has sentenced two U.S. journalists to 12 years of hard labour on the charge of violating its borders. And after conducting two nuclear tests, it now declares itself a nuclear power.

With the Six Party Talks to denuclearise North Korea once again on the ropes and the world reeling from a deepening financial crisis, the United States is looking to China for help.