The United States has exhausted its annual supply of EB-5 immigrant investor visas for the first time in the program's history following a surge of applications from Chinese nationals.  The State Department's chief of visa control, Charles Oppenheimer, told lawyers at an industry conference earlier this week that no more spots will be available to Chinese for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The proliferation of social media has brought extremist ideologues world-wide into closer and more personal contact with potential recruits than antiterror officials ever dreamed possible, but it also has handed Western investigators powerful new tools for tracking potential threats.

Tanzania expects tourist numbers to double to 2 million by 2017, the state tourist board said, challenging regional rival Kenya where Islamist attacks have scared away visitors. Tanzania, famed for its pristine beaches and safari parks beneath snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, has always played second-fiddle to Kenya, which has a more developed tourism industry and better air links to the key markets in Europe and United States.

North Korea is arguably one of the world's most racist societies, so it's with no small measure of irony that the country's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday bashed the United States for the happenings in Ferguson, Missouri, which has been gripped by unrest following the death of a black teenager at the hands of a white police officer.

With terrorists running rampant in Iraq and Russian convoys violating Ukrainian borders, the U.S. State Department is fussing over a new unnerving threat: its own diplomats taking the “Ice Bucket challenge.”  The ice bucket challenge is this summer’s social media fad with a philanthropic twist (donations go to the ALS Foundation, which funds research to fight Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Qatar is working to help free four Americans held hostage in Syria by various armed groups, a Gulf source familiar with the matter said on Monday, a day after the Gulf Arab state's diplomacy helped free a journalist held since 2012.

Almost 21 months into an administration characterized by dramatic economic and political reform, U.S. perceptions of Mexico continue to reflect an echo of Mexico’s past rather than the reality of Mexico’s present. Americans see poverty and insecurity rather than a middle-class democracy that has become a rising export powerhouse and valuable economic partner of the United States intent on deepening engagement with its northern neighbor.