Venezuela's vice president is visiting Russia, seeking stronger ties with Moscow amid mounting pressure from the United States.

These shipments are rarely just about saving lives, writes Morten Wendelbo.

So that’s Wednesday nearly wrapped up. Here are some of the stories we published on irishexaminer.com today which we hope will help you make sense of it all this evening.

International intervention in a country’s affairs almost always ends in conquest or civil war.

Far from bringing freedom and democracy to these countries, US intervention left all of them is chaos.

Here's your afternoon bulletin.

It would be mackerel stupid to believe that the international campaign to expel Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait in 1990 was undertaken, at vast expense in lives, treasure, and political-system capital, to defend democracy — or for what then passed, and still does, for democracy in the Middle East. There was other, far more lucrative skin in that game.