In times of great uncertainty, with the economy recovery still wobbly and unemployment still at over 8%, the struggling rich are juicy targets for writers looking to score some easy points. Who can read about the exotic vacations and the lavish summer homes, $17,000-a-year dogs named Zelda and Duke and the $30,000-a-year adult study groups, and not […]

Beijing continues to up the ante in Asia with the latest in a string of double digit defense spending increases: 11.2 percent this year, according to new figures released by China’s government.China’s official defense budgets understate actual military spending; the Pentagon estimates total Chinese defense spending at around $160 billion a year, compared to $525 […]

Via Meadia reached some big milestones in the last few days: since our first posts went up in the fall of 2010, more than 2000 posts have gone up up on the site and readers have posted more than 25,000 comments as they logged 7,000,000 page views. The ratio of comments to posts continues to […]

In case you missed them, this week’s long-form essays took a critical look at President Obama’s Afghanistan policy, linked the rise of the Blue model with the ascent of self-indulgent consumerism and tried to parse Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy rhetoric in the run-up to the Russian elections.We outlined the challenges that “quangos”—NGO’s primarily funded by […]

According to a new study reported in Scientific American and published in Nature Medicine, it turns out that your biology textbook was wrong about the basic facts of the human body: A study led by Jonathan Tilly of the Massachusetts General Hospital overturns the decades-long idea that women are born with all the eggs they […]

This week Gallup released its latest polling on the Obama health care law and contrary to the rosy expectations of the law’s proponents, Americans have not warmed to the plan and remained deeply divided as to its merits. But perhaps most striking is this finding: Americans overwhelmingly believe the “individual mandate,” as it is often […]

Via Meadia has been watching the situation in the Maldives (population 350,000), waiting for the situation to become clearer before offering a reaction. If anything, things have gotten more complex. Here’s a quick timeline:1. 2008: Protests sweep the Maldives against a hated dictator, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who had reigned since 1978. In November, protest leader […]

As European heads of government assembled to sign the super-strict fiscal treaty the Germans insist on, Spain’s prime minister came with an announcement for the group: Spain plans to break the rules in year one.Under the agreement, Spain is supposed to slash its budget deficit this year to 4.4 percent of GDP, but Prime Minister […]

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny announced this week that Ireland would hold a popular referendum on a German-led fiscal treaty in May or June. The shifting sands of local Irish politics makes a No vote a real possibility.Reuters reports: …pockets of protests [in Ireland] on emotive issues like hospital closures and job cuts for teachers […]

February polls in Israel and the United States provide some guidance for those trying to see how the two longtime allies will or will not coordinate policy in the standoff with Iran.From a Brookings poll of 500 Israelis in February 2012: A plurality of Israelis (42%) would support a military strike by Israel against Iran’s […]