Soon after President Barack Obama's trip to Mexico and Costa Rica in early May, the U.S. administration announced a number of landmark events aimed at boosting ties with Latin America. Later in May, Vice President Joe Biden will visit Brazil, Colombia and then Trinidad and Tobago.

Canada has become the first NATO country to list the Afghan Taliban as a terrorist organization. This move was taken two years after Canada withdrew its combat troops from Afghanistan where they had fought the Taliban and less than two years before all foreign troops are supposed to be withdrawn from there. In fact, the implications of the move are rather ambiguous – it comes against a background of calls coming from various sources to start a negotiation process with the Taliban and widening apprehensions that without the Taliban's participation, no long-lasting resolution in Afghanistan is possible.

On Thursday morning, an explosion in the east of the Afghan capital, Kabul, left at least six people dead and 30 injured. The figures in themselves hardly stand out against the background of other recent bloody incidents but the very fact that the attack took place in the capital serves to underline the dominant tendency in recent months; the Afghan government and the international military forces are unable even to control the capital. With the gradual reduction of foreign forces, the situation is doomed to become even gloomier.

It took President Barack Obama full three days to react to the accusations that the Internal Revenue Service had specifically targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny of their claims for tax-exempt status if the group in question was affiliated with the Tea Party or had the word "patriot" in its name. The U.S. President pledged he "will not tolerate" and will have "no patience" with the "outrageous" application of laws in a partisan way. At the same time, he totally dismissed the criticism of his administration on another burning issue – that is the handling of the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Obama called the criticism a "politically motivated sideshow". However that may be, the quandary the administration is facing reflects the specific nature of the current political situation. Not having fully recovered after the disgraceful defeat in November 2012, Republicans are desperately trying to use any opportunity in order to turn Obama's second term into a lame duck session.

The September 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, has once again become one of the hottest topics in U.S. media. After the State Department Accountability Review Board on Benghazi failed to interview in detail the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, Republican lawmakers initiated their own investigation and, although its instigators flatly deny that the new probe is targeting President Barack Obama or Ms. Hillary Clinton, they have given grounds for Democrats to state that their sole target is to tarnish the image of the supposed Democratic 2016 front-runner.

As the Taliban fighters have begun their annual spring offensive, this time against a background of dwindling numbers of foreign troops, outside parties to the Afghan conflict, primarily the US and Pakistan, step up their efforts to find a solid role for themselves in post-2014 Afghanistan. The goal is simple; to be the first to establish links with the Taliban, widely tipped as the would-be rulers once the West withdraws. The White House recently appointed veteran diplomat James Dobbins as special envoy for AfPak. The nomination comes as a surprise, since Mr. Dobbins is known as an advocate for harsh measures, hardly consistent with the process of troop withdrawal.

On Monday, the Pentagon released its annual report to the U.S. Congress on China's military capabilities. For the first time ever, the U.S. Department of Defense directly accused the Chinese government and military of using cyber-weapons against the U.S. in a deliberate, government-developed strategy to steal intellectual property and gain strategic advantage.

Recent Israeli airstrikes against targets on Syrian territory have once again raised the question, who will be first to turn the current smouldering internal conflict into an all-out (and all-in) war? It will inevitably involve the participation of much more powerful and influential forces than Bashar al-Assad's government or the Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels. The strikes, allegedly aimed at blocking the flow of arms from Iran to the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, in fact benefit the most radical Islamist forces opposing the Syrian government. The strikes also coincided with an announcement by a member of the UN human rights investigators' team, Carla Del Ponte that, contrary to what had been said by many Western sources, there is evidence that the chemical weapons in Syria were in fact used by the rebels and not by the government.

Three recent polls conducted since late March show that the way Barack Obama is handling foreign policy is losing public support in the U.S. His dealing with foreign policy issues finds even lesser approval among Americans. This can no longer be ascribed to his "inexperience" in these matters, as was the case during his first tenure, but rather reflects a systemic fault in the whole system where ideology of U.S. supremacy collides with the changing global realities and America's real abilities.

On Sunday, several U.S. lawmakers (mostly Republicans) urged the administration to take a stronger action in view of the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syria's regime. This comes against a background of growing evidence that whoever the U.S. may support among the rebel forces, it will be the most radical Islamists affiliated with al-Qaeda who will eventually take the upper hand. This does not seem to bother the U.S. lawmakers, and this reveals their ultimate end: at the moment, it is not really Syria that matters, but the desire to teach Iran a lesson, which is next on the list of would-be targets.

U.S. and Canadian officials have announced that at least one of the two suspects arrested on Monday in connection with a plot to blow up a railroad track had traveled to Iran within the past two years. The statement clearly indicates the investigators’ ultimate goal; to link Iran to the terrorist plot, add maximum possible weight to charges against the country. In fact, it all resembles an earlier campaign in the 1950s, known as McCarthyism. People were routinely accused of being linked to the Soviet Union, with no proper investigation and often after biased investigative techniques.

On Thursday, George W. Bush Presidential Center – home to the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and the George W. Bush Institute – is to be dedicated in Dallas, Texas. The ceremonial event has not only brought to memory the past events of his largely unsuccessful presidency, but also gave rise to new speculations on the future of one of the most influential dynasties in the U.S. modern history. The prospects of George W.'s younger brother Jeb running for (if not winning) presidency in 2016 now seem more than real.

On Tuesday, Israel became the third country after Britain and France to claim that Bashar al-Assad's regime had used chemical weapons. While the US is still mulling over its options, unwilling to rush to the conclusion that Syria has crossed the "red line", the pressure on Washington to intervene is increasing.

The US State Department released its annual report on human rights practices for 2012 last Friday. The report underlines five major developments as most striking; shrinking space for civil society activism around the world, the ongoing struggle by people in the Middle East for democratic change, steps toward emerging democracy and a tentative opening for a civil society in Burma, the game-changing nature of information and communication technologies in the face of increased suppression of traditional media and freedom of expression, and finally, the continued marginalization of and violence against members of vulnerable groups. A thorough analysis however forces the conclusion that in fact it was not the state of human rights in any given country that really mattered to the report's authors but simply a question of whether or not that nation was ready to follow in the wake of US foreign policy.

Over the weekend, during a meeting of "Friends of Syria" foreign ministers in Istanbul, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, pledged to double the aid given to Syrian rebels. At the same time both the UK and France announced that they would renew their attempts to lift the EU arms embargo on the rebels. The escalation of western efforts to arm the Syrian opposition continues as though the West has learned nothing from its own past, when arming what appeared to be pro-Western forces resulted in growing terrorist activity on its own soil.

On Saturday the US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is departing on a week-long tour of five Middle East countries, during which he is expected to finalize one of the biggest arms deals with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The visit comes against a background of explicit warnings coming from Israel that it is ready to carry out a lone military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The development clearly discloses the basic strategy adopted by Washington – that is, while stepping back from direct military involvement in the standoff with Iran, to solve the problem by making its proxies do the dirty work.

In a recent interview, the UN special correspondent on counter-terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, compared US drone strikes in Pakistan to terrorist attacks perpetrated by al-Qaeda. He also stated that the drone program risked legitimizing al-Qaeda.

The Boston blasts have increased the American public's alertness to happenings that might previously have gone unnoticed had it not been for the terrorist marathon bombing. Suspicious objects are being found everywhere including Capitol Hill and the White House. As so often happens in instances like this, the public is only too eager to jump to rapid conclusions and the primary suspect has already been selected – the Muslim world.

A day after the horrendous blast at the Boston Marathon, no one has claimed responsibility for it. More so, it is not yet clear whether it was a terrorist attack. But fear of retaliation has already gripped American Muslims and Muslims the world over, and such fears are fuelled by the reaction of some media personalities in the US

Late last week, some unnamed UK scientists told British media that had found traces of "some kind of chemical weapon" in the smuggled out samples of Syrian soil. Since the "red line" was drawn for Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime long time ago, the new discovery is widely perceived as an excuse for a direct military intervention or at least arming the Syrian rebels.