ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE INTERVIEWS GLORIA MACAPAGAL-ARROYO

WASHINGTON, April 21 (UPI) -- Food riots suddenly erupted widely. Links with the subprime mortgage crisis dubbed the global upheaval the Perfect Storm.

WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- To paraphrase Winston Churchill on the Battle of Britain: Never in the field of Middle Eastern reporting was so much owed by so many to so few. In fact, to one man.

WASHINGTON, April 14 (UPI) -- We are beginning to use words, phrases and assertions without any regard to their meaning. The predicate "Islamist extremism is the defining characteristic of the 21st century" ignores we are now in year eight of this century -- with 92 more years to go. No one can possibly know what will define our century over the next nine decades.

WASHINGTON, April 9 (UPI) -- It was billed as the last summit meeting between Presidents Bush and Putin. They both pledged their two countries to work together to address challenges.

WASHINGTON, April 3 (UPI) -- Borrowing $2 billion to $3 billion a day from other countries to maintain the world's highest standard of living, based on conspicuous consumption, in an age of growing world shortages, while fighting two wars whose costs will soon ring up a $1 trillion tab, is tantamount to living on borrowed time.

WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- "I don't care if it takes another 10 or 20 years, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to fail." So spoke Frank Carlucci, former U.S. defense secretary and national security adviser, at the Council on Foreign Relations. Failure, said Carlucci, would break the Atlantic Alliance and turn the world stage over to the next two global heavy hitters -- China and Russia.

WASHINGTON, March 26 (UPI) -- To understand the chasm between mainstream media and the blogosphere, Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" is a helpful guide. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they are not. But they are frequently fact and factoid (an invented fact that is taken to be true because of its appearance in print). And many blogs have achieved the status of print by virtue of the fact that countless millions get their news online. The average age of a newspaper reader is 55. Onliners? Try 30.

WASHINGTON, March 17 (UPI) -- Washington's Pakistan kibitzers will soon rue the day they squeezed President Pervez Musharraf to restore democracy. "Demonocracy" is what has now emerged, or an unholy alliance of longtime America-haters, including the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition of six politico-religious extremist parties that lost the Feb. 18 elections, plus a gaggle of former generals and admirals against Musharraf, and friends and admirers of A.Q. Khan, the man who ran a nuclear Wal-Mart for the benefit of America's enemies (North Korea and Iran).

WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) -- The abrupt resignation of Middle Eastern commander Adm. William J. "Fox" Fallon over a controversial interview and profile in Esquire magazine was a carefully choreographed exit for the 63-year-old Navy aviator. The first Navy man appointed to head the Central Command, which stretches from the Middle East to South Asia and includes Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, he is now one of three former Centcom commanders who are opposed to bombing Iran's nuclear facilities if the mullahs keep on trucking their nuclear weapon ambitions.

WASHINGTON, March 6 (UPI) -- The bursting of the housing bubble, which punctured the credit bubble, was a criminal enterprise at the outset, pooh-poohed at first by those who should have known better, that has now triggered a global economic crisis. The U.S. prison population is at an all-time high with 2.3 million behind bars, but the subprime con men/women are enjoying the fruits of their scams.