Anyone who has been following the news recently should be well aware that college debt is quickly becoming one of the most serious problems facing young Americans. College loans recently made headlines by surpassing credit cards as the leading source of debt for Americans, and unlike credit cards, student loan debt cannot be discharged in […]

It isn’t just evil Wall Street bankers who commit financial fraud. Recent news out of Kansas City serves as a reminder that unions can be just as prone to financial shenanigans as major corporations. The Kansas City Star reports that multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Labor, have initiated an investigation into gross mismanagement […]

Tripoli, on Lebanon’s northern coast, witnessed street battles between pro- and anti-Assad groups back in February. Violence erupted again over the weekend, and intermittent fighting continued for a third day today. Rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire echoed through part of the city. Perhaps five people have been killed, and dozens wounded. Lebanon’s Daily Star carried ominous reports (“Tension […]

Little by little, American military engagement in Africa is deepening. Diplomacy, investment in infrastructure and energy, action in that thing we’re not supposed to call the war on terror anymore: these are all driving a greater US presence in and around Africa. If anything, this is likely to increase.The Washington Post reports: …[T]he number of […]

There’s a storm raging in the blogosphere over the recent firing of Naomi Schaefer Riley from the Brainstorm blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her offense? Suggesting that Black Studies programs are “a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap,” and offering some pointed examples.We’ll leave the debate over whether Riley’s dismissal was a legitimate response […]

In addition to the sanctions imposed on Iran by the US, the European Union announced earlier this year that it too would impose an embargo on Iranian oil. That embargo is due to take effect in less than two months, but there are signs that not all EU members are singing from the same hymn book. […]

Few bilateral relationships matter more for the long-term stability of Asia than that between New Delhi and Islamabad. But few, too, are as seemingly intractable.India and Pakistan were born out of mutual hostility to one another; during the Partition of British India, many hundreds of thousands of religious minorities felt compelled to flee to either Hindu-majority […]

How did Vladimir Lenin die? UCLA researchers who specialize in posthumously diagnosing departed dignitaries from Christopher Columbus to Abraham Lincoln have some new ideas: Stress, family medical history or possibly even poison led to the death of Vladimir Lenin, contradicting a popular theory that a sexually transmitted disease debilitated the former Soviet Union leader, a […]

First they wanted to ban literary classics from school curricula. Now the geniuses at the increasingly irrelevant United Nations have come up with the brilliant notion that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People requires the return of Mount Rushmore to the Native Americans. Reports the Associated Press: A United Nations fact finder surveying […]

The week got off to a shaky start, with the elections in Greece portending an unstable pro-austerity coalition facing a motley assortment of fringe parties (comprising communists and fascists), and France opting for the socialist candidate, François Hollande. Markets initially reacted without much fuss, as it looked like Angela Merkel would hold her ground on […]