Cuban Surprise: President Obama shocked the world and his Republican opponents announcing yesterday that 50 years of shunning Cuba is a failure and that the US is re-establishing diplomatic relations with the island country just 90 miles off the coast …

Massacre: In a continuing war against education, yesterday’s Taliban attack on a Pakistani school in Peshawar resulted in the death of 141 people, 132 of them just schoolchildren. Authorities say nine Taliban gunmen assaulted the compound of the Army Public …

Econ 101: US stocks took a slide yesterday greased by the falling price of oil. The Dow Jones dropped 268 points as oil headed toward $60 a barrel, the lowest in five years. US oil production, among other factors, is …

Iraq: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has rejected international calls to form a unity government that includes the Sunni minority to defuse the country’s civil war. Maliki is a Shiite who has squeezed Sunnis out of power in both the military …