Rumors are swirling that senior figures in the Taliban are willing to enter into serious negotiations with American forces. These assertions should be taken with a fair pinch of salt, but if true, this is welcome news.According to the Guardian, two former Taliban ministers, a former mujaheddin commander and an Afghan mediator with experience of […]

The Associated Press puts the death toll from two devastating factory fires at 314, of which 289 were killed in a fire at a garment factory in Karachi. Most of the deaths were caused by suffocation as people caught in the basement were unable to escape when it filled with smoke, said the top firefighter […]

The march of equality though the last century and into this one is an unequivocally good thing. But there’s another, more troubling sense of the word “equality” that we would just as soon not see make much headway. According to a new Pew report (h/t Forbes), since 2008 the number of whites and Hispanics who rate themselves as “lower […]

Despite earlier indications that the euro-skeptic Socialist and Freedom Parties would clean up in today’s Dutch election, exit polls show that voters have decisively cast their votes for the more centrist, pro-Europe parties. The Dutch election, widely regarded as a referendum on the broader European project, will likely be seen as another vote in favor […]

Market watchers everywhere are breathing sighs of relief today: the German Constitutional Court dismissed a popular challenge to the constitutionality of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the proposed €500 billion euro bailout fund. As The New York Times reports, Chancellor Merkel is breathing a sigh of relief as well: “Once again, Germany today sends a […]

Yesterday’s message from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was clear: We will not apologize for freedom.After violence erupted in Cairo over an anti-Islamic film produced in the United States, many were upset about an apologetic tweet from an Embassy staffer lamenting the existence of a film that attacked a religion so openly. Washington disavowed the tweet, […]

The NYT reports on the European Union’s struggle to investigate Gazprom’s pricing and policies, and the Kremlin’s rebuttal: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia issued a decree on Tuesday that had the effect of prohibiting Gazprom, the state natural gas giant, from cooperating with European Union investigators trying to build an antitrust case against it.The […]

The Pew Research Center has a new report out that shows a strong decline in Indians’ satisfaction with their country’s direction and economy. Only last year, Indians were nearly as optimistic as the prospering Chinese, but now? Just 38% of Indians are satisfied with the way things are going in the country – a 13 […]

Reuters brings us the latest in a string of bad news on the pension front. A study by Loop Capital Markets found that nearly two-thirds of state pension plans are funded below the minimum healthy level of 80 percent.Yet more troubling than this finding is the fact that investors are commissioning such studies in the first […]

Islamist forces are consolidating their control of northern Mali, strictly enforcing sharia and instituting punishments like public whippings, stonings for adulterers, and dismemberment for thieves. The AP reports: Monday’s amputations occurred in the northern city of Gao, said Aliou Hamahar Toure, its Islamic police commissioner.He told The Associated Press by telephone that the five victims […]