Meet President van Rompuy!
This week Herman van Rompuy became the first president of the European Union, capping a nearly decade-long battle by European bureaucrats to reform the political structure of the EU. If you're reaction to the headline was "who?", the BBC was kind enough to publish this profile on President van Rompuy. His selection as EU president has already brought out the critics, some of whom say that van Rompuy was the only man bland enough for all 27 EU members to agree upon. Former British PM Tony B

English-Russian Language Links Over Hockey
A couple of interesting stories today from the New York Times "SlapShot" blog on hockey - first is news that Russia's upstart professional circuit, the Kontinental Hockey League has finally launched an English-language version of its website. The KHL, which stretches across Russia and into parts of Eastern Europe, is trying to establish itself as the world's other premier professional hockey league (aside from North America's NHL, of course). An English-language website is a step towards trying to stoke interest in the KHL on

Cosmonaut's Blog, The Funniest Thing in Space
Wired.com posted this story yesterday about Cosmonaut Maksim Suraev, blogger and current resident of the International Space Station. And unlike NASA's efforts on the Internet, Suraev's blog is pretty damn funny (thankfully RussiaToday is offering an English-language translation of Suraev's posts). Among his recent posts was the photo below:

Wise Uses of America's Power?
RealClearWorld's Compass Blog offered up this post the other day: "The Use and Abuse of American Power". The post started out talking about the United States' ongoing involvement in Afghanistan, but it went on to cite a quote from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a 2008 speech when he talked about the use of American military forces during the past 40 years in locales including: "Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and more." Writer Greg Scoblete goes on to ask "whether most of these military conflict

Don't Worry About Iran Getting The Bomb
The Asia Times offers up one of the best and most interesting pieces I've read about the whole topic of Iran's pursuit of a nuclear bomb. Sure, we'd all love a world without nukes, but that just ain't gonna happen...and currently the international community is bound up over what to do over Iran's (alleged) development of a nuclear weapon. The Asia Times' Aetius Romulous though makes a fairly compelling case that Iran's getting the bomb would be a good thing. His argument goes that an Iran with the bomb would become a