Cuban President Raul Castro called on Latin American and Caribbean leaders Tuesday to work together on pressing regional problems at a gathering of all Western Hemisphere nations except the U.S. and Canada.

Last year’s debate on immigration reform centered on discussions on improving border security for the nearly 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico by adding new fencing, more electronic detection technology including drones, and beefed-up numbers of security patrol.

On Sunday, January 19, the small city of Nago in northern Okinawa re-elected their mayor. Americans especially will wonder why a local election in a far-off place should matter. Because by voting for Mayor Susumu Inamine people voted against Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the United States military. Local fishermen and farmers voted yes to their traditional way of life, no to American helicopters polluting the pristine waters of Oura Bay.

These are indeed troubling times in Afghanistan. As the United States prepares to withdraw its combat troops by the end of the year, rights advocates worry that Afghan women’s hard-fought gains of the past 12 years could begin to erode. Their fears are more than justified by the situation in Afghanistan today. Despite more than a decade of intervention and development, Afghanistan is considered the most dangerous country in the world to be born a woman.

Iran is now our new favorite place to discuss at dinner. It is still one country. They seem to speak English there. Americans know we have a strained relationship with Iran from all those hostage movies, but we remain fascinated with all things Persian. America’s top destination remains Europe. It has countries we can visit — museums and hotels and attractions, such as the changing of the guard.

The 24/7 Olympic news cycle is consumed right now, and understandably, with security issues for the forthcoming Winter Games in Sochi. Then, too, there are the construction woes over the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, where the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, is paying a visit this week.

A long New Yorker profile of President Obama provides a great deal of insight into how the president and his administration view the undeniable expansion of jihadist groups claiming allegiance to al Qaeda. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” President Obama said, distinguishing between groups that are “actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland” and those who are “engaged in various local power struggles and disputes.”