President Obama Announces End of Combat Mission in Afghanistan

After 13 years in Afghanistan, President Obama announced that the combat mission in Afghanistan has come to an end. In 2012 he made the promise to end the mission in 2014 and last month in December, he made good on that promise. The U.S. and Britain ended their operations in October but the mission was officially ended over the holidays at NATO military headquarters in Kabul. During the ceremony, a new mission called Resolute Support was announced that would provide training and assistance to Afghanistan and involve about 11,000 U.S. troops.

The war in Afghanistan was the longest war in U.S. history and took over 2,000 lives since 2001 when it began. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 to uproot and destroy the Taliban. The success of this mission has been debated, especially when the expansion of ISIS into Iraq, Syria, and other neighboring nations is taken into account. When the U.S. left Iraq at the end of 2011, it left a power vacuum that was just waiting to be filled and ISIS was the first to fill the void.

Many worry that the same will happen to Afghanistan once the U.S. abandons its combat mission. The Taliban remains a dangerous foe in the Middle East and 13 years of war has done little to change that.

Oil Prices Further, Concern Grows

A quick look at any gas station will reveal startlingly low gas prices as a result of the price of oil declining by half this year. Oil started this year around $87, before rising to over $100, then falling to $48 as of January 7th. When oil dropped below $50 a barrel, a psychological price point for traders, the stock market took a brief dive with it. Energy stocks were hit hardest and have taken an impressive beating in the past few months, but other sectors have begun to drop as well.

Falling oil prices also hurt drilling operations here in the United States. Oil companies need the price of oil to be at least high enough to pay for the expense of producing oil. When oil falls below that point, companies have no choice but to close operations until the price rises back to a level they can afford. This hurts our country’s goal of energy independence since producing oil in the U.S. requires a higher price to be profitable.

Widespread concern over this huge drop in price persists in the business community. Lower oil prices can hurt employment when oil companies lower production and cause defaults of energy companies on their debt that they may not be able to pay back. When the price of gas eventually goes back up, take comfort in the fact that that is good news for the global economy.

AirAsia Airliner Crashes in Java Sea

AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed in the Java Sea on December 28, 2014 on its way from Surabaya to Singapore. The aircraft was lost from radar after it made a request to climb from 32,000 ft to 38,000 which was denied due to heavy air traffic. Weather analysis reveals that the Airbus A320 was traveling through a storm cluster that is believed to be a factor in the crash.

This was the first crash in AirAsia’s history since its founding in 1996 and the second deadliest A320 crash with 162 people on board, none of which survived. As of January 7th, 40 bodies have been found from the crash and 24 of those have been identified. A large search has been conducted around the last known location of the flight; even local fishermen are getting involved.

Multiple pieces of the aircraft have been recovered including parts of the tail and seats. A large amount of the wreckage was found floating in the sea but more is under the ocean. Recent reports reveal evidence that says the aircraft landed horizontally in the ocean and that the impact was less severe than anticipated. Air France Flight 447, an A330 traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed in the Atlantic Ocean when it flew through similar weather conditions resulting in instruments freezing over and giving the pilots false information.

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