Good news from China this morning: not only does Mr. Xi’s health seem improved, so do U.S.-China relations.The future Chinese president’s comments that he hopes military-to-military relations will improve between the U.S. and China are a positive sign. Deepening cooperation between these two militaries is vital to improving trust and to reducing the chance that […]

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the number of new mortgages fell 10 percent last year, hitting a new low not seen since 1995. Much of the decline is due to the more stringent lending standards banks have used since 2007: Banks have become much more cautious about making loans since the housing bust. The […]

WSJ: At least 10 Turkish soldiers were killed and more than 70 were wounded in a rocket attack by Kurdish militants in Turkey’s eastern province of Bingol, government officials said, in the latest of a series of brazen attacks on Turkey’s security forces that underline how the region’s three-decade-old conflict is deepening.A Turkish military convoy […]

Buried deep underneath the freezing Siberian tundra, an international team of scientists may have found mammoth fragments containing living cells of the extinct behemoth, the Associated Press reports: Russia’s North-Eastern Federal University said an international team of researchers had discovered mammoth hair, soft tissues and bone marrow some 328 feet (100 meters) underground during a […]

The violence sweeping the Muslim world reached Afghanistan yesterday. Ten South African pilots and crew under contract with the U.S. government in a program called “embassy air” were among the 14 killed in a suicide bombing. The New York Times has the details: “A spokesman for an Afghan insurgent group, Hezb-i-Islami, claimed responsibility for the […]

U.S.-China tensions are rising as both countries prepare for a rare simultaneous transition of power this autumn.China issues have come to the fore in the American campaign, as Obama responded to criticisms of being “soft” on China with a request that the WTO declare China’s auto industry to be illegally subsidized. Meanwhile, Chinese leaders are stoking anti-Americanism to rally support, […]

After one week of closed schools, protests in the streets and acrimonious sniping in the press, the Chicago teachers’ strike has finally come to an end. Worried that they were losing the support of Chicagoans, teachers finally opted to end their protest and accept a compromise contract. Although the union still needs to officially vote on […]

In a move that’s sure to further dispirit liberal opposition groups in Russia, Vladimir Putin’s administration made a bold move: The Kremlin’s provocative decision to end two decades of work in post-Soviet Russia by the United States Agency for International Development — with little warning ahead of an Oct. 1 deadline — was announced on […]

I have not written any satire for this blog so far. Perhaps it is time to make up for this. A witty reader of the blog reminded me of a satire I wrote quite a few years ago and, frankly, had forgotten. I re-read it. It seems to me that it is still quite relevant. […]

In Russia, diamonds really are forever. According to new reports from Moscow, trillions of carats of super-hard “impact diamonds” lie in an ancient asteroid crater know as the Popigai Astroblem in eastern Siberia. Russia has kept its existence secret for decades in order to reap greater profits from existing diamond supplies. The Christian Science Monitor has more: […]