Hugo Chavez, the brutal Marxist leader of Venezuela, has faced a rocky road in his effort to emulate the career of Fidel Castro. The Venezuelan middle class, opposition newspapers and radio stations, and political groups accustomed to the nation’s tradition of democracy have all resisted the tentacles of his octopus, dealing stinging rebukes to his claim to represent all the people of Venezuela.

The madness of the courts and the greed of trial lawyers are proverbial. The woman who won a huge award from McDonald’s when she spilled hot coffee on her lap has become, perhaps, the archetypical example of litigation run wild. Now McDonald’s again finds itself making headlines in a lawsuit over conduct that seems safe and ordinary to most of us.

Catholic bishops are warning that if the Bashar al-Assad (left) regime in Syria falls to Islamists, there may well be a mass genocide of Christians, such as seen in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Though Christians cannot support the brutality of the Assad dictatorship, few believe that rule by Muslim extremists will be any better.

Leonard Leo, Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), warned in a video interview with Terry Jeffrey at CNSNews.com that despite the long-term U.S. military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Christianity may well be wiped out in the region because, as CNSNews put it, of "severe and persistent persecution of Christians there" by Muslims.

On  Monday, President Obama, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (left), announced that American forces had helped create a “new Iraq.” During a closed-door meeting after the public gathering with Maliki, Obama told reporters: “People throughout the region will see a new Iraq that’s determining its own destiny, a county in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process.”

The United Russia party of former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has suffered a setback at the hands of the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), which won about 20 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections to the state Duma, the lower house of parliament.

Mainland China remains Communist China. Marxism, or perhaps Maoism, remains the political philosophy of government in this giant nation. Although Marxism has been a resounding failure everywhere it has been tried — except, of course, for the party elites — communists still propound the virtues of their system. One of those virtues is that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” means that strikes do not exist under communism because the workers hold power.

_{Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — the formal head of the Russian government — has launched a campaign to become President, or head of state, a position currently held by Dmitry Medvedev. Putin had already served two terms as President before becoming Prime Minister; now he has decided that he wants to become President again and swap offices with Medvedev, a protégé of his.}

According to an October 26 article by Anjana Ahuja of New Science magazine, "Israeli children with birth defects are increasingly suing the medical authorities for ever allowing them to be born."

The Vatican on October 19 sent a message to Hindu leaders asking them to resist “hateful propaganda” against Christians and allowing Christians to practice their faith in peace. A principal cause of conflict is the conversion to Christianity of Dalits or “untouchables.” The aggression against Christians stretches across much of India, from the eastern state of Orissa to the southwest state of Kerala.