American Security Council Foundation (ASCF)

This year's event will be held Saturday, March 10th at Grand Harbor Golf & Beach Club in Vero Beach, Florida.

 Proceeds from this event to benefit the Indian River County Veterans Council.



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The European financial crisis and the ineffective effort to stop Iran’s nuclear-weapons program are crashing into each other. As the European Union adopts new restrictions on importing Iranian oil, the most-troubled EU economies will continue to seek delays and exceptions.

 Ironically, France and the U.K., which for years resisted strong U.S. efforts to impose crippling sanctions on Iran, are now leading the EU charge. Of course, neither France nor Britain imports significant amounts of Iranian oil, so the economic impact on them will not be major. However, the potential consequences for financially troubled EU countries are grave. Greece, for example, imports about a third of its oil from Iran, and would be badly harmed if its energy costs rose. So would many southern EU members. Italy imports about 12 percent of its oil from Iran, and Spain about 15 percent.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai meets Friday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy Friday, a week after the French leader threatened to pull his troops out of Afghanistan early.

During talks in Paris, President Karzai is expected to sign a long-term strategic agreement outlining France's role in Afghanistan after all international troops leave the war-torn country in 2014.

 

A judge in Guatemala has ruled that there is sufficient evidence to try former dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide during his time in power from 1982 to 1983.

The judge ruled Thursday in Guatemala City that Montt should answer to charges of responsibility for mass killings of thousands of indigenous people in their villages. The killings were part of a counterinsurgency effort aimed at leftist rebels in Guatemala's 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.

 

The screening of an anti-Muslim film for nearly 1,500 New York Police officers has sparked a call for the resignation of the city's police commissioner.

A coalition of Muslim groups is calling for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's dismissal. Kelly appears in the controversial documentary The Third Jihad, widely available on Youtube. It portrays even ordinary Muslims as suspects in a radical Islamic quest to destroy Western civilization and take control of the United States.

The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, grew at its fastest pace in a year-and-a-half in late 2011, but questions remain whether the advance will continue in coming months.

The U.S. government said Friday the country’s national economic output increased 2.8 percent in the October-to-December period, a bit below the 3 percent estimate economists had projected. But the fourth quarter advance was the best of the year and the quickest pace since the April-to-June period in 2010.