So seven years later it will come down to this weekend.  Whether President Obama can withdraw all American combat troops from Iraq by August will be decided by the Iraqi elections this weekend.
If the election passes off peacefully, American soldiers will probably go home on schedule. But if there is a repeat of the sectarian [...]

Change may only happen in small steps, but slowly and surely the geo-politics of oil are changing.
The dynamics of Middle Eastern oil are in transition. Anyone who argued that the war in the Gulf was a war about oil should sit up and take notice.  And anyone concerned about the climate should also be worried. [...]

Sometimes a story grows legs, other times it hits the dust.
But yesterday’s front page story in the Independent about negotiations to end oil trading in dollars seems to have hit a raw nerve and sent shock-waves through the currency markets.
In response to the story, gold is now trading at record levels and the dollar is [...]

The dollar is sliding on the currency markets this morning after reports by the Independent newspaper that Arab states are in secret talks with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.
The move – if it happens – would be the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, [...]

So the United Arab Emirates has won the race to host the new International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) beating off competition from Bonn and Vienna.
Never mind that the UAE has the highest per capita carbon footprint in the world, a fact that had attracted strong opposition from other countries. Never mind that the UAE is [...]