The economic crisis in Spain, with a crippling jobless rate at 26 percent and labor strikes growing violent, has unleashed a brutal turf war between rival Latin American drug cartels. Spain’s rapid economic and social collapse in the second half of 2012 created compelling opportunities for drug cartels from Mexico to “relocate” their operations. The conflict between rival Colombian and Mexican drug cartels for domination of Spain is producing an unprecedented “turf” war.

Unlike the dinosaurs, we have, in effect, become active agents in changing our destiny. A giant meteor wiped out much of life on earth 65 million years ago because the dinosaurs didn't collectively create a missile shield to deflect the meteor. Humans, on the other hand, with our orbiting telescopes and space probes, and our growing awareness of the threat from space, can track large foreign objects coming from millions of miles away, and are talking about collectively deflecting those that could do us harm.

About 60 percent of the 17 million Asian-Americans in the United States are foreign-born. Ninety percent of Asian immigrants come to the United States through family-based immigration visas, so backlogs in the system affect their everyday lives. In fact, nearly half of the 4.3 million people in the family backlog worldwide are in Asia. “What people often…frame as a Latino issue, it’s just not true,” Moua said. One in 11 undocumented immigrants in the United States is Asian-American; and one in 10 Dreamers is Asian-American.

While previous modes of discipline were more hidden and implicit in state control, the development of CCTV could be identified as a shift to a physical, identifiable sign of mass surveillance that has been developing for several centuries. This explicit form of surveillance certainly hints at ominous trends in Western society, which has sparked countless Orwellian allusions to Big Brother, but it may also offer an opportunity for change. 

Reaffirming his commitment to protect current and future generations who depend on Social Security, President Obama declared in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, “Our government shouldn’t make promises we cannot keep -- but we must keep the promises we’ve already made.”  Indeed, we must keep the promise of old-age security that Americans have earned through hard work. The nation’s politicians should be held accountable to keep their word that they will not cut the Social Security benefits of older workers, retirees, people with disabilities and the children of deceased and disabled parents.

Having French President Francois Hollande parade like a conquering lion through Timbuktu is not a great idea. Of course Malians and the citizens of Timbuktu are correct to cheer France for having helped drive out the occupiers.  The occupiers committed atrocities against innocent people. They imposed a harsh regime and harmed Timbuktu's great culture and legacy by destroying shrines and irreplaceable manuscripts. Yet critical observers who care about Mali and Africa generally must still ask serious questions. 

Local bishops, not the pope, traditionally run church life and sometimes political life from Mexico to Argentina, but the reach of Pope Benedict XVI, who announced his retirement effective Feb. 28, has been unique. For decades, when Ratzinger’s shoe dropped, the tremor reverberated over Latin America, where half of the world’s 1 billion Catholics live. Amid speculation about who will be the next pope are suggestions that the time may have come for a Latin American prelate or someone from the global south. 

The GOP’s response to President Obama's first post re-election State of the Union Address in some ways will be markedly different than in its response to his prior addresses. But in one way it will be the same. Its blatant frontal assault on him didn’t work for four years. So this time the GOP’s rebuttal will be softer and gentler in tone and theme. But underneath the flowery rhetoric, the GOP’s relentless attack on his policies is still very much in place.

If time has proven anything, however, it’s that James Bond is resilient. The movie franchise celebrated its 50^th anniversary in 2012 with a massive Blu-ray boxed set and the theatrical release of “Skyfall,” a film that is arguably the best in series history. Directed by Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” “Revolutionary Road”), “Skyfall” embraces Craig’s new reading of Bond while offering plenty of nods to the franchise’s iconic trappings. 

America stands at a crossroads. We can take the high road toward equal access to high-quality public education, reaffirm our commitment to democratically elected public officials, end the failed war on drugs, recommit to the right of workers to bargain for better conditions, lower our dreadful rate of hyper-incarceration and implement the Affordable Care Act. Or we can travel in the opposite direction and move the nation away from equal opportunity and justice.