He wasn't standing on an aircraft carrier with a banner saying "Mission Accomplished'' behind him, but Russia's President Vladimir Putin was a lot more credible than former US president George W. Bush when he declared his country's military intervention in the Middle East a success.
If the US Congress had not imposed a two-term limit on the presidency in 1947 after Franklin D. Roosevelt's record four electoral victories, President Barack Obama would be a safe bet for a third term next November.
The French left does political correctness and moral outrage much better than the American left, so the row over what Algerian novelist and journalist Kamal Daoud recently said about sex in the Arab world has been bigger and louder in France than in the United States. But it is equally stupid in both places.
Opening the National People's Congress in Beijing last weekend, Prime Minister Li Keqiang set China's growth target for the coming year at 6.5%-7%, the lowest in decades. Only two years ago, he said 7% was the lowest acceptable growth rate, but he has had to eat his words. He really is not in charge of very much any more.
What would you call a country that called for "a structure under which can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom ... a kind of United States of Europe'' at the end of World War 2 (Winston Churchill, 1946), but refused to join it when its European neighbours actually began building it (European Economic Community, 1957)?
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,'' said John Maynard Keynes (or maybe it wasn't him, but no matter).
"We will defend Aleppo: all of Turkey stands behind its defenders,'' says Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on February 10.
Exactly five years after Egypt's democratic revolution triumphed, the country is once more ruled by a military office.
Here we go again.
Zika, the mosquito-borne virus spreading through the Americas that has been linked to thousands of babies born with underdeveloped brains (microcephaly), is just the latest new disease to spread panic around the world.
"Europe has forgotten that history is fundamentally tragic,'' said Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister.
A new round of UN-sponsored peace talks to end the ghastly civil war in Syria is scheduled to open in Paris tomorrow, but even now it is not clear who will be attending.
Sending Colombia's 51-year-old civil war has taken a long time.
Five years ago this month, the "Arab Spring'' got under way with the non-violent overthrow of Tunisia's long-ruling dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
Last week, a Thai cosmetics company called Seoul Secret launched a new beauty product, Snowz, and got locally famous Thai actress Cris Horwang to appear in the promotional video.
Lech Walesa, a national hero 26 years ago for his role in ending communist rule in Poland as the leader of Solidarity, has little political power in the country today, but he still has his voice.
There is an old fairground game called Whac-a-Mole. You whack a (fake) mole on the head and drive it down into its hole - and instantly one or more other moles pop up out of other holes.
Independent London journalist Gwynne Dyer surveys the state of the world in 2015 and finds it was a pretty good year for most people in most places.
If the Taliban were not so busy fighting the rival Islamic State jihadis who began operating in Afghanistan early this year, they might now be within reach of overthrowing the Afghan Government that the Western powers left behind when they pulled out most of their troops last year.
‘‘I'm going to try to form a government,'' Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said as the results of the national election came in on Sunday night, ‘‘but it won't be easy.''
