News stories by Jim Lobe, page 7

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (IPS) - Signalling a somewhat more modest global U.S. military posture, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel Monday called for sharp reductions in the size of the U.S. Army, the service that has borne the brunt of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan over the past dozen years.

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (IPS) - If President Barack Obama wants to move more quickly to normalise ties with Cuba, it appears he has gained the political space to do so, according to analyses of a major new bipartisan public-opinion poll released here Tuesday by the Atlantic Council.

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (IPS) - In an unusual statement, the World Bank's private-sector arm has threatened to cancel a controversial investment in a Honduran palm oil company that has been implicated in serious human rights abuses, including numerous killings, over the past five years.

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (IPS) - Eight years ago, Stephen Rosen, then a top official at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and well-known around Washington for his aggressiveness, hawkish views, and political smarts, was asked by Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker magazine whether some recent negative publicity had harmed the lobby group's legendary clout in Washington.

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (IPS) - In what looks to be a clear victory - at least for now - for President Barack Obama, a major effort by the Israel lobby and its most powerful constituent, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to pass a new sanctions bill against Iran has stalled in the U.S. Senate.

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (IPS) - If people outside the United States are looking for answers why Americans often seem so clueless about the world outside their borders, they could start with what the three major U.S. television networks offered their viewers in the way of news during 2013.

WASHINGTON, Jan 09 (IPS) - Three years after the last U.S. combat soldiers left Iraq, the past week’s takeover of the western city of Fallujah by the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has refocused Washington’s attention on a country that it had hoped to put permanently in its rear-view mirror.

WASHINGTON, Jan 03 (IPS) - If U.S. President Barack Obama conceived his foreign policy prospects for 2014 as a popular child's board game, the snakes he will have to jump over significantly outnumber the ladders that can propel him to success.

WASHINGTON, Dic 21 (IPS) - This week's introduction by a bipartisan group of 26 senators of a new sanctions bill against Iran could result in the biggest test of the political clout of the Israel lobby here in decades.

WASHINGTON, Dic 20 (IPS) - Three months after averting a military strike against Syria with a last-minute deal to deprive it of its chemical weapons arsenal, U.S. policy toward the world's most violent conflict appears increasingly at sea.