Can you afford a 30 percent increase in your weekly food bill? Just days ago, two leading food agencies warned of such an increase, and added that "the world should prepare for a decade of high food prices" (Financial Times, June 17, 2011). How will you be affected in the coming months? And how will the crisis end?

“Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov are spending two days in Paris shortly after Moscow and Paris signed a deal for Russia to purchase two French Mistral-class amphibious assault ships.”  This follows a deal where Germany has agreed to build a military training center in Russia, to train Russian troops.

The EU, like other major world powers (the U.S., China, Britain, France), has interests in the Caribbean.  Three years ago, the EU signed the Economic Partnership Agreement with the Caribbean Community and the Dominican Republic.

Hundreds of millions around the world looked on with wonder when Catherine Middleton and Prince William became husband and wife in a grand ceremony in London, England last April 29. What a wonderful fairy tale of love, pageantry and royal glamour! But was it just a spectacle? Or did the royal wedding point toward something important to Christians today?

Following President Obama’s visit to Britain and his encouraging rhetoric that “Britain is America’s closest ally,” this week “Washington signed on to a draft declaration on the question of the Malvinas Islands [Falkland Islands] passed by unanimous consent by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) at its meeting in San Salvador.  In doing so, the United States sided not only with Buenos Aires, but also with a number of anti-American regimes including Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua.”