South Africa will not nationalize its mining industry, said Deputy President Kgalema Molanthe this week, but the turmoil rippling through South Africa’s economy, and its political leadership, is not over.“It is not going to happen,” Molanthe told the BBC, confirming that the mines would not be nationalized. The nationalization campaign was championed by Julius Malema, formerly […]

The IBM supercomputer known as “Watson” is best known for its victory on Jeopardy, but its creators have much bigger plans for it: Citigroup has just announced that it has hired the computer, in what the Wall Street Journal refers to as “the beginning of the end of human employment at banks.”Watson is already on the […]

When he received the nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to India in 2003, David Mulford was no stranger to the international scene. He studied economics at Lawrence University, then went on to graduate school at Capetown University, Boston University and Oxford, earning a doctorate in Britain. He entered the banking industry, specializing in the […]

The medical world may be on the verge of a major breakthrough on par with the discovery of penicillin. As profiled in this NYT piece, a number of Silicon Valley companies and entrepreneurs are looking to lower the price of genome sequencing to the point that it will be within reach of the average consumer (below $1,000)—a […]

The attention being given to the defection of Syria’s deputy oil minister is part of a pattern: Journalists, especially in the West, let their (justified) sympathy for the Syrian revolt get the better of their judgement.In this case, the media is describing this deputy oil minister as “a top official” and his decision to join […]

Growth is down in Latin America’s largest economy and nervous, shell shocked Brazilians are crossing their fingers that their economy isn’t still stuck in its historic trap of commodity-dependence and high inflation.Brazil, which grew 2.7 percent last year, isn’t the only emerging economy to slow down in the wake of decelerating growth across the developed […]

The Onion, the satirical paper of record, has a clever twist on the contraceptive debate in the form of a breathless report entitled “Vatican Dispatches Elite Team Of Bishops To Sabotage Contraceptive Manufacturer“: Anonymous sources within the Vatican confirmed Tuesday that Pope Benedict XVI has dispatched a crack team of six highly skilled bishops to […]

Washington State’s Senate passed a budget proposal last week, but that’s not the big news. The really surprising thing, noted by this Seattle Times editorial, is that it was pushed through by the Republican minority with the help of three Democrats who deserted their own party lines.Washington state’s budget woes will sound familiar to Via Meadia […]

For years, we’ve heard that video games are guilty of creating a generation of inattentive and violent youth wasting away their time on mindless entertainment. Yet a wave of new studies has thrown cold water on that theory and drawn some conclusions about the benefits of gaming. While the findings of the studies are mixed, […]

China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, gave a lengthy interview to the international press on the sidelines of the Chinese legislature’s annual meeting. Here are the highlights as Via Meadia‘s sees it: China continues to have a low-key response to Washington’s “pivot to Asia.” There have been no threats from Beijing, and to our knowledge no important official […]