Since 1979, Egypt has been among the top non-NATO recipients of American foreign aid, garnishing over a billion dollars annually in recent years. Last year’s revolution cast doubt on the future of that tight relationship, as the White House braced itself for the uncertain future of the Arab nation’s leadership. After a tumultuous year and a […]

It has been pointed out to me that the last three posts on this blog were overly didactic, as if I were giving classroom lectures. Contrary to my earlier statement that I disclaim any pretension to being a Renaissance man, I may give the impression of pretending just that by holding forth consecutively on Catholicism, […]

China continues to lose its edge at producing low-wage goods. In the face of rising wages and waning Western demand, the production of textiles and other manufactured goods is shifting out of China and into Southeast Asia, where wages remain low. The Financial Times reports: The association of Chinese textile exporters said last week that […]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently began a six-nation tour of Asia, visiting Indonesia yesterday and China today. On the agenda: promoting peaceful diplomatic solutions in the Asian Game of Thrones. The Associated Press reports: “It is time for diplomacy,” she said. “We have the East Asia Summit coming up. This should be the goal that […]

The world’s attention is currently focused on the travails of EU member states, but the European Union as a whole isn’t doing so hot either. At the moment, it is halfway suspended somewhere between an organization for regional cooperation and a functioning government. It’s a failed federation, a little bit like the United States under […]

Germans are donning yarmulkes and taking to the streets to protest a vicious anti-Semitic attack on a rabbi earlier this week. YNet News has the story: Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit who denounced the attack just a short time after it occurred called on residents to join in a demonstration of solidarity at the site of […]

Nearly everyone’s a loser in the pension crisis. Workers lose when the city fails to pay their pensions. Municipal governments lose when they run out of cash or make risky investments to cover the shortfall. But a few guys never seems to lose. Chief among them are the Wall Street banks, who scam cities into […]

More people (100,000 plus) fled the Syrian civil war in August than in any month since the conflict began 18 months ago, the UN reports. Total refugees: 235,300, give or take. Five thousand people were killed in August, according to an opposition group. UNICEF tallies last week’s deaths alone at 1,600.Writes Jon Lee Anderson in […]

It’s a familiar dilemma for supermarket shoppers: If I buy the organic meat or veggies at nearly twice the price of the regular fare, what am I getting for my money?A group of researchers at Stanford has an answer: nothing. In a study comparing organic foods to their conventional counterparts over four decades, researchers found […]

In some ways, I thought as I headed into Kolkata last month, my route across India was looking very anachronistic. Mumbai, Chennai and now Kolkata: those were the three principle centers of British power during the heyday of the Raj. Chennai (Madras) was the oldest British post, Mumbai (Bombay) became British as part of the […]