Market forces are working against college degrees in Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh studies in Vietnam, where the Communist government has resorted to offering free tuition to attract students. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung signed a decree last month giving free tuition to students agreeing to take four-year courses on Marxism-Leninism and the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh, the country's revolutionary hero, at state-run universities.

Saudi Arabia is ranked first in the growth of tourism in the Arab world followed by Egypt and Morocco, according to a recent report by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Saudi Arabia’s top ranking was not hampered by a significant decline in the number of tourists in 2012. The report said the Kingdom witnessed the largest decline in the number of tourists — 22 percent — in 2012 compared to a whopping increase of 61 percent in 2011 over 2010. Tourists numbers are likely to drop again at the end of this year.

Over the last day and a half, international attention has fixated on the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown on supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi. While the UN, EU, and Western and regional nations were quick to come forth with their own reactions to the events, Asia has remained relatively quiet. This was certainly true of China, which said little for the first 24 hours or so of the crackdown. On Thursday afternoon, however, the Foreign Ministry released a terse statement.

Vladimir Putin appears to be seizing on the Egyptian crisis and the U.S. response to it to expand Russia’s influence in the Arab world’s most populous country. On Thursday afternoon President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would be cancelling a joint military exercise with the Egyptian Army over its violent crackdown on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has distanced itself from a series of obscene Facebook posts written by a senior official who is currently in charge of efforts by Israel to improve its image. Daniel Seaman, who was recently promoted to the post of head of Israeli public diplomacy on the internet, is the architect of a controversial new programme to mobilise hundreds of university students to write pro-Israel Facebook posts by giving them scholarships, and formerly served as director of Israel’s Government Press Office.

President Obama, deploring the military-led Egyptian government’s deadly crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood protesters there, said on Thursday that the United States would pull out of scheduled joint military exercises with the Egyptian Army. “While we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual while civilians are being killed in the streets,” Mr. Obama said in remarks delivered from his rented vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Venomous political attacks have become the norm in Venezuela, and now a governing party legislator has unleashed a tirade in the country's legislature using gay slurs in trying to discredit the opposition. The lawmaker displayed photos in the National Assembly on Tuesday showing a top aide to opposition leader Henrique Capriles dressed, along with other men, in women's clothing, apparently at a party. He suggested, without elaboration, that the photos proved the aide's involvement with drug traffickers and male and female prostitution.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced on Monday one of the most "sweeping economic overhauls" in Mexico's history with his proposal to open the country's closed energy industry to foreign investment for the first time in 75 years. For Mexico's northern neighbor, the question is how do these reforms affect the average American consumer, the North American energy sector, and the overall U.S. economy? According to energy and economic analysts, the answer is simple: A lot.