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WASHINGTON: The United States (US) looks unlikely to follow through on a threat to relegate Britain to second-class trade status once its ally leaves the European Union, as it weighs the potential costs of undermining the countries close diplomatic and military ties. President Barack Obama had warned ahead of Thursday's "Brexit" referendum that Britain would move to the back of the queue on US trade priorities if it voted to leave the bloc, well behind a much larger US European trade deal now under negotiation. But in the face of a severe financial market reaction to the vote to...

srael and Britain’s relations will not change once Britain leaves the European Union (EU), British ambassador to Israel David Quarrey said on Friday. Speaking to Channel 2 News after UK residents voted to leave the EU in a referendum and Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation, Quarrey said, “The relationship between Britain and Israel will not change significantly.” "...lies...more lies...self delusion..." .....

Saudi Arabia has announced that it is severing diplomatic ties with Iran following Saturday's attack of its embassy in Tehran during protests. Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi foreign minister, made the announcement on Sunday as the foreign ministry announced that it would ask the Iranian diplomatic mission to leave the kingdom within 48 hours. The Saudi foreign ministry has also announced that the staff of its diplomatic mission have been evacuated, and are now on their way back to Saudi.

Relations between Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama are not quite as bad as they have been made out to be - and things could yet improve in the coming months, according to former leading Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. Speaking at Haifa University Tuesday, Lieberman - who served as Senator from 1988-2012, during which time he was nominated as the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate - did acknowledge that the personal relationship between the two was far from perfect. Lieberman was the keynote speaker at the opening of the third session of the Ruderman Program for American Jewish Studies at the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Relations between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans have hit a new low. There has been little direct communication between Obama and the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill since Republicans took full control of Congress in January. Obama has threatened to veto more than a dozen Republican-backed bills. And House Speaker John Boehner infuriated the White House by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress without consulting the administration first. But the dispute over Obama's high-stakes nuclear negotiations with Iran has put the relationship perhaps beyond repair. The president and his advisers are seething over...

Two high school teachers in Southern California have been arrested on suspicion of having sexual relations with students on an overnight beach camping trip. South Hills High School teacher Melody Lippert allegedly met a group of male students in November at the beach in San Clemente, where she gave them alcohol and "engaged in a sexual relationship with one of them," according to the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

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"What Would America Fight For?" That question shouts from the cover of this week's Economist. It is, asserts the magazine, "the question haunting its allies." While most agree that America would fight to defend her treaty allies and to protect vital interests if imperiled, the question is raised by President Obama's reticence in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. Asked in Manila how he answers critics who say his foreign policy appears to be one of "weakness," the president, stung, replied: "Typically, criticism of our foreign policy has been directed at the failure to use military force. And the question ... I...

"This is my last election," President Obama said in words caught on an open mic. "After my election, I have more flexibility." He was speaking in Seoul, South Korea, in March 2012, almost exactly two years ago, to Dmitry Medvedev, then in his last year as Vladimir Putin's stand-in president of Russia. The subject was missile defense, and Obama was apparently seeking time to assuage Russia's objections that a proposed U.S. missile defense system, sited in Romania, Poland, Turkey and Spain, would not be aimed at Russian missiles. Earlier, in September 2009, Obama canceled missile defense installations in Poland and...

With twin suicide bombings in Volgograd, at a train station and on a trolley, 34 Russians are dead and scores are injured and hospitalized. Moscow and the world have been put on notice by Doku Umarov, the Chechen Islamic terrorist, that the winter Olympics in Sochi, six weeks away, may not now be safe for visitors. How should friends of Russia respond? President Obama, in a gesture of solidarity with the Russian people, who have suffered more than any European people from Islamic terror since 9/11, should announce he has changed his mind and will be going to Sochi. The...

Not many foreign policy experts would argue with the proposition that the country with which the United States has the most problematic relationship is Pakistan. Most Americans, when they have thought about it, have taken a similar view since Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid by Navy SEAL Team Six in May 2011. Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Abbottabad, Pakistan, just a few miles from Pakistan's military academy. It is hard to believe that his whereabouts weren't known to Pakistan's military or its intelligence agency, the ISI. It has been apparent for some time to...

When it comes to President Obama's prowess as commander in chief, "leading from behind," at this point, would be a step up. Some believe that the United States should engage in military action in foreign countries when America's national interests or those of our allies are at stake. Some believe we should rarely do so, perhaps only when we are under attack. Some think we should actively export democracy to other nations, whether or not our national security interests are currently on the line. And some, like President Obama, are literally all over the map, a quagmire of incoherency. Since...

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: It has to be shattered before being ascertained. --Vladimir Nabokov After 9/11, the prevailing view was that "nothing would ever be the same." The sight of bodies plunging 100 stories from the flaming towers of the World Trade Center seared into our psyches the reality that America has cruel and wanton enemies. The USA Patriot Act, which sought to repair some of the intelligence lapses that permitted the 9/11 attacks to go undiscovered, passed the House by a vote of 357 to 66 and the Senate by 98 to...

Many serious Americans are distressed by what they see going presently regarding matters of race. They are perplexed by the obvious anger and hatred directed by some against others, including examples of random people being beaten in various places following the Zimmerman verdict, "for Trayvon". They see entertainers boycott an entire state because of what the entertainers absurdly claim is racism, the result of a verdict in a grossly manipulated case in which the black "victim" purposefully initiated a beating on the "cracka" who then shot him. The jury wasn't fooled. The system worked, even if the malcontents did not...

BEIJING - Pyongyang has allegedly asked Beijing to send them an envoy in order to improve their soured relations, but Beijing turned it down, seen as a warning regarding the regime’s recent warmongering rhetoric. Multiple sources in Beijing told the JoongAng Ilbo on Tuesday that “North Korea asked China to send a high-ranking envoy at the deputy-ministerial-level, but China rejected it. “China said ‘if they want an envoy, North Korea should send their envoy [to China] first,’” the source said. However, the North hasn’t sent an envoy to Beijing so far, the sources said. If they do, China is likely...

One of the most deeply rooted concepts in science and in our everyday life is causality; the idea that events in the present are caused by events in the past and, in turn, act as causes for what happens in the future. If an event A is a cause of an effect B, then B cannot be a cause of A. Now theoretical physicists from the University of Vienna and the Université Libre de Bruxelles have shown that in quantum mechanics it is possible to conceive situations in which a single event can be both, a cause and an effect...

PHILADELPHIA—Ask Americans how race relations have changed under their first black president and they are ready with answers. Ashley Ray, a white woman, hears more people debating racial issues. "I know a lot of people who really thought we were OK as a nation, a culture, and now they understand that we're not," she says. Karl Douglass, a black man, sees stereotypes easing. "White people deal with me and my family differently," he says. Jose Lozano, who is Hispanic by way of Puerto Rico, believes prejudice is emerging from the shadows. "Now the racism is coming out," he says. In...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Turkey and Israel are looking for ways to normalize political relations, saying, “We want to restore relations with Turkey.” Netanyahu spoke to a group of Turkish journalists in Jerusalem and his comments were reported by the Turkish daily Today’s Zaman. “In a region where instability reigns, Israel and Turkey are two quite stable countries. I believe in [our] common interest,” Netanyahu told the journalists, adding that Turks and Jews have a long history. The newspaper noted that the conversation between Netanyahu and the Turkish journalists was the first time since the May...

The president keep on saying how all his allies are the most important and are punching over their weight class.

Labor Day is a celebration of the American worker, who helps turn management’s vision into reality. In that spirit, I wish everyone a happy Labor Day. Well, almost everyone. Let me explain. For as long as I can remember, my father owned a small manufacturing company in southwest Michigan. He didn’t pay the highest wages in the area, but he treated each employee with respect, and these workers in turn gave Dad an honest day’s work. That mutual respect, combined with a unique bonus program that all his employees participated in, made for a steady workforce.