Here’s a good sign of Chinese-American cooperation. The Associated Press reports that China wants to invest some of its US government debt in American infrastructure: China wants to convert some of its mountain of U.S. government debt into investment in renovating American roads and subways, the commerce minister said Friday. Speaking to a business group, […]

In a surprising reversal, Lebanon’s Hezbollah backed government agreed to pay its share of funds to the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is investigating the murder of a former Prime Minister. The New York Times reports: The United Nations-backed tribunal investigating the killing of a former Lebanese prime minister said Thursday that it had […]

Christians have not had a good time in the modern Middle East.  Sadly, that doesn’t seem likely to change as Butcher Assad’s hold on Syria slowly slips.  While Via Meadia is no fan of Iran-enabling tyrants who kill thousands of their own people, there are good reasons to be concerned about the plight of minorities […]

As more information emerges about the SAT-cheating scandal on Long Island, it has become clear that this isn’t a story about kids.  Parents and school officials have gone off the rails.  As the NYT reports, parents did nothing as their children paid stand-ins as much as $3,600 to catapult their scores into the 2100 range; […]

It looks like climatologists could learn some lessons from salt. A recently concluded massive study on the effects of salt in the human diet found that — contrary to public perception — in people at risk for heart disease, less salt was not always more beneficial. A moderate amount of salt, scientists now say, is better than […]

The eurocrisis is a marathon, not a sprint, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the German parliament yesterday.  Thanks to the massive, Fed-organized central bank interventions of the last couple of days, she could be right.While the European financial system is still under great stress, world business leaders are not going to bed at night wondering if […]

Joe Nocera has been a welcome addition to the New York Times op-ed page since his start there as a regular some months ago. On Tuesday he wrote another fine column, this one on why the current German leadership is on a path to do what he thinks, in retrospect, will look completely insane—not to […]

Welcome to the “Democratic Republic” of the Congo, called the world’s least developed country in the United Nations. (Eat your heart out, Afghanistan.) Elections here are a joke, and not a funny one. The most recent presidential and parliamentary vote is currently being counted, but early reports sound familiar: The incumbent president is accused of […]

Whatever happens at the global green gabfest in Durban, greens will, no doubt, take comfort in assuring themselves that science is on their side.Well, not quite. It seems that Science — that is, one of the world’s most prestigious and influential scientific journals — is open to doubts about some of the more dire premises regularly […]

South Africa’s battle with graft is beginning to unravel. An estimated 20% (R30bn) of the country’s procurement budget is siphoned off by corruption, cronyism and incompetence. President Jacob Zuma’s latest response is reminiscent of something from Silvio Berlusconi’s old playbook. From the FT: Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, on Tuesday removed a high-profile anti-corruption official, […]