Economics & Business Archive

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez was the guest of honor as the newest member nation joined the 30th Mercosur Summit in Córdoba, Argentina July 20-22. But it was Cuba’s President Fidel Castro whose rare foreign visit stole the show with some fiery rhetoric and the signing of a new trade pact with the Mercosur. Defiance of Yankee “imperialism” was a recurring theme at the summit. This might be expected for an event held close to the childhood home of Ernesto “Ché” Guevara. Fidel and his protégé Chávez peppered their discourse with anti-American sentiment. Along with President Evo Morales of Bolivia, the […]

China’s new railroad linking the city of Golmud in Qinghai province with Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, is a $4.2 billion engineering feat. Stretching 710 miles at an average elevation of 13,000 ft, it is the highest railroad in the world. Technological excellence was not the only reason why President Hu Jintao called the line a “magnificent feat” while flagging off the inaugural run on July 1. The railroad is a powerful instrument with which Beijing hopes to complete the full integration of Tibet with the mainland. Ever since Chinese communist forces overran Tibet in 1950, the region has undergone […]

The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is what the U.S. military calls “asymmetrical”. In other words, the opposing forces are so different that they’ll never fight on the same terms. For a high-tech conventional land and air power like Israel, this means its airplanes, tanks and artillery work hard to find targets that will hold still — and whose destruction will make a strategic difference. For Hezbollah, a lack of conventional forces means it relies on improvised terror weapons whose effects are difficult to predict. Short-range ballistic missiles called Katyushas comprise the backbone of the Hezbollah arsenal. The terror group […]