Washington is scrambling to apply a fig leaf to its program of covertly and overtly arming the armed rebels in Syria, trying to convince the increasingly skeptical that it can somehow thread the needle and ensure that sophisticated weapons and CIA training in Jordan...

After an unexpectedly tight vote in Venezuela over the weekend, heir to Hugo Chavez’s legacy Nicolas Maduro squeaked by with 50.7 percent of the result. His opponent, US-favored Henrique Capriles Radonski lost by some 1.7 percent of the vote and, although he has not...