The trial of Pussy Riot continues to pay dividends for the cynical Putin regime. Having managed to cast the young women’s protest as an act of vandalism against the Orthodox Church in many Russians’ eyes, he was given another leg up against his liberal opposition when a psychopath in Kazan murdered two women and scrawled “Free […]

Illinois taxpayers are facing huge liabilities for their state’s bloated, poorly managed, and underfunded pension system, and public sector workers face an uncertain future, as taxpayers are unlikely to cough up the huge sums required to make good on the debt.Now everything is getting worse: S&P has downgraded Illinois bonds, meaning that the interest rate […]

Given the extent of poverty throughout India, child labor has long been viewed as inevitable. Delhi is trying to change that, as the FT reports: India’s government has proposed a ban on the employment of children under 14, as it tries to push more pupils into school and address an issue that has sullied the […]

Venezuela’s state-owned energy company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PdVSA), has delayed re-opening the Amuay oil refinery following a massive explosion. Coming only months before the next election, this incident is shining a light on President Chávez’s weak record on infrastructure. The blast, which killed 50 people, is just one of several recent failures involving bridges, […]

It’s already been a banner week for high-profile flameouts, but we may now have a winner for worst of the lot. NY Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, used more than $100,000 in public money to hush up sexual harassment charges against Democratic Assemblyman Vito Lopez. The New York Times reports: Mr. Lopez, 71, was censured […]

The Middle East continues its thousand-year-old tradition of sectarian division. Many worried that Egypt’s decision to attend the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Iran could be a sign that anti-Americanism was trumping sectarian rivalry, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Rather, Egypt’s President Morsi apparently went to Iran to berate the Shiites and schismatics […]

Although the economy will be far and away the deciding factor in the upcoming election, this does not mean that other issues will be ignored. The Romney camp is already preparing attacks on Obama’s record on foreign policy, and this week, the two campaigns have been trading barbs over education—specifically, the role of the private […]

Japan and North Korea are holding their first official face-to-face discussions in four years, according to the BBC. (The two countries currently have no diplomatic relations.) Is this a sign of a friendly future, or will North Korea once again, like Lucy, snatch the football away?For Japan, there is no downside to testing whether North Korea is […]

After much backroom wrangling, the contents of Governor Jerry Brown’s much-touted California pension reform bill have finally been made public just a few days before the vote at the end of the week. As we predicted when we last heard about the bill, the final product contains a few steps in the right direction, but […]

A court in Georgia has heard how four self-described “anarchist” U.S. soldiers planned to kill President Obama and overthrow the U.S. government. The group is on trial in civilian court for a separate incident: the alleged murder of a fellow officer and his girlfriend, who knew about the group’s activities and was killed because, in the […]