The Chicago teacher strike, the high-profile fight pitting two branches of his own party against one another, is now entering its fourth day. The New York Times dissects the conflict and profiles the risks it poses to the president: The strike pits several core components of the Democratic coalition against one another: The teachers’ union […]

The Caspian natural gas pipeline project is back on the front burner. After a decade-long hiatus, Turkey and the EU are reviving the project to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan through Azerbaijan to Turkey and on to Europe. Asia Times has the story: On September 3, the EU’s Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, Turkish Energy and […]

Reuters reports that the death toll in a new Congo ebola outbreak is up to 31. New cases are still turning up and there’s real possibility this could spread.99 times out of 100, it won’t. Ebola kills very quickly; people sick with it don’t usually travel much and these outbreaks tend to burn themselves out very quickly. […]

Greece still does not have enough money to pay its debts, and may require a third bailout, says the Wall Street Journal, quoting an IMF official: “Greece will require additional financing, which may take the form either of official-sector involvement or of additional loans, hopefully on more favorable terms,” Thanos Catsambas, an IMF alternate executive […]

The violent unrest continues in South Africa, where several more mines were shut down Wednesday after more than a thousand protesters demanded higher wages from mining companies.The protests were started by the new Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which was formed due to dissatisfaction with the ANC-aligned National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The […]

Anti-American violence in the Middle East and Africa is spreading like a forest fire, if only a controlled burn. Protests at U.S. embassies began Tuesday in Cairo and Benghazi, more recently emerging in Yemen, Iran, Tunisia, Morocco, and Sudan—all in reaction to a poorly-made anti-Islamic film trailer with rather dubious origins.The New York Times reports […]

Backers of Scottish independence just got a face full of cold water from Manuel Barroso, the head of the European Commission. If Scotland leaves the UK, he said, it would not automatically convert into an EU member state. It would have to reapply, and since Denmark and the UK are the only countries with the right […]

The good news? The Fed is passing out more heroin in the form of cheap money. It’s going to be buying $40 billion of mortgages a month, hoping to keep interest rates down and boost house prices. Since the ECB is taking the same approach to sovereign debt in Europe, nobody’s going into withdrawal anytime […]

A mansion belonging to the late Rafiq Hariri, formerly the prime minister of Lebanon until his assassination in 2005, is on sale to a select group of “wealthy international buyers” for the cool price of £300 million. That more than doubles England’s previous house-price record. CNBC (via the FT) has the details: The 45-bedroom, seven-storey building runs […]

Recovery may be underway, but most American families aren’t feeling the love. The recent census report shows that despite (extremely slow) increases in national GDP and employment, inflation-adjusted household income—an indicator with far more impact on the lives of most Americans—has been dropping since 2009. As the New York Times notes, median household income is now 8.1 […]