For those of you planning on smuggling drugs into Singapore, don’t expect the Midnight Express treatment. Expect the rope. The LA Times reports: After a yearlong review, Singapore officials announced in Parliament on Monday that mandatory death sentences in a dozen categories of serious offenses will be retained because they have broad public support and […]

It is difficult to decipher whether those who argue that Russia holds the keys to the solution of the Syrian crisis really believe it or are using Russia as an excuse to do nothing. The recent Syrian Action Group meeting in Geneva clearly showed that the Kremlin is not moving closer to the position of […]

In a direct challenge to Egypt’s ruling military council, the newly-elected President Mohamed Morsi ordered the Parliament to reconvene. This comes after the elected body was forcibly dissolved by the military ruling council, a measure that was backed up by the country’s highest court.The smoke hasn’t cleared yet. Both sides are scrambling to act, and […]

Only a few years after the financial crisis, foreign firms see the U.S. as safer alternative for private investment than ever before. The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. is pulling in more foreign investment than China: Outside investment in North America—predominantly the U.S.—is expected to total about $270 billion this year, a roughly […]

Secretary Clinton used a speech in Mongolia to take a veiled swipe at nearby China’s government, saying democratic countries like Mongolia stand in stark contrast to those governments that . . . work around the clock to restrict people’s access to ideas and information, to imprison them for expressing their views, to usurp the rights of […]

As California begins to look for ways of dealing with the problem of its chronically underfunded public employee pensions, a new Field Poll is providing some guidance about what citizens of the Golden State think.The poll’s findings are somewhat mixed. On the one hand, it found majorities in favor of placing a cap on pension […]

Not to be outdone by California, Amtrak wants to join the high-speed rail club: On Monday Amtrak announced a $151 billion plan to develop a 220 mile-an-hour train network through the Northeast Corridor, connecting travelers between Boston and Washington, DC, in a little more than three hours. That is almost as long as it currently takes […]

Japan is contemplating a move in the Great Game that might make the recent Scarborough Shoal quarrel between China and the Philippines look like a sideshow. Nationalist rumblings in China and Japan have set off a contest over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea—a resource-rich string of rocks under Japanese administration. The central government […]

When Australia’s Treasurer, Wayne Swan, heads to Beijing next week he’s expected to ink a deal to make the Australian dollar directly convertible with the Chinese yuan. If successful, Australia would become only the third country to negotiate such a deal, joining Japan and New Zealand.Direct conversion reduces costs for importers and exporters by obviating the cumbersome […]

Fighting in Jos, the strife-torn Plateau province in central Nigeria, has killed up to 100 people, reports the Financial Times. As is usually but not inevitably the case, one side in the latest round of bloodshed was Christian, the other side Muslim. Plateau state is where the predominantly Muslim north and the mostly Christian south […]