One of Google’s newest products—the Nexus Q—has an interesting new feature. In addition to the futuristic design, the product has one, more unique, characteristic: It was manufactured in America.As the New York Times reports, Google is beginning to experiment with shifting some of its manufacturing to the US. Bucking the trend in Silicon Valley, where […]

With the U.S. set to join China and the rest of the ASEAN countries in Cambodia for an annual regional gathering next week, the atmosphere between Beijing and Washington is frosty, but there are efforts to get a thaw underway. According to Reuters, Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, will head […]

Barack Obama has always been popular around the world. But while the president’s support at home has ebbed considerably since the heady days of November 2008, he is still well-regarded abroad, as Dan Drezner discovered after giving a speech to a group of international institutional investors about the state of play in this year’s election.Drezner […]

Anyone skimming through the comments to my posts on the German court ruling outlawing the circumcision of (male) children, and therefore the practice of Judaism as it has been understood by Jewish parents for thousands of years as well as the practice of Islam, can see what passions this subject stirs up.But Germany is a […]

On Wednesday the New York Times ran a fascinating piece authored by Thomas Erdbrink, dateline Tehran, under the title “Iran’s Vice President Makes Anti-Semitic Speech at Forum.” The twelve-paragraph article describes the remarks of Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi at a United Nations-sponsored conference on the illegal drug trade. For those who have not seen […]

Much to the surprise (and, one suspects, the chagrin) of the deranged doomsaying wing of the environmental movement, new forecasts of US CO2 emission are out and they point to an even steeper drop than the last set of predictions.No cap and trade, no huge new taxes on oil, no draconian driver restrictions, no air […]

This week Serbia’s government took a hard turn to the right—and to the east. Yesterday the new nationalist president appointed Ivica Dacic, a protégé of the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, as prime minister.Now, along with Nikolic’s nationalists, Milosevic’s old progressive party will dominate the government. Both parties are very interested in tightening Serbia’s alliance with […]

Mexicans head to the polls to elect a new president on Sunday. The election is widely seen as a referendum on current president Felipe Calderón’s drug policy. 50,000 people have died in drug violence since he took office. His party’s candidate is expected to lose.The polls say Enrique Peña Nieto will be the next president. Despite his […]

After years of bad news, public pension funds may finally be seeing some glimmers of light. Reuters reports that returns shot up in the first quarter of 2012 by $179.2 billion, a record high since the data was first recorded. This brings the total value of pension holdings and investments to a relatively high $2.8 […]

If Mahatma Gandhi has access to wi-fi in the afterlife, and is able to keep up with the liberal blogosphere, he must be rolling in his grave this week.Yesterday, members of the postal workers union ended their four-day hunger strike at a rally in front of the steps of the Capitol. Since it began, the […]