Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-Jeou has been re-elected for a second four year term, though with a much smaller margin of victory than he had the first time. It’s a victory for his Nationalist Party, and suggests that relations with the mainland will be relatively smooth for another four years.Ma is famous for a “three no” […]

Via Meadia doesn’t usually have much to say about sports, and about the prospects of the various teams in the NFL we do not, in fact, take any view.  But a recent poll showing that 43 percent of Americans (and 52 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29) believe that God is […]

The FT is warning that Goodluck Jonathan has just gambled and lost the biggest test of his presidency thus far. He is the latest in a line of Nigerian presidents who occasionally try to abolish the country’s costly fuel subsidies. But Nigerians have come to see the subsidies as the one and only benefit they […]

Via Meadia has been trying to tell the world’s greens for some time now that their quest for the green global climate treaty they dream of is a unicorn hunt.  No matter how many people join the hunt, no matter how enthusiastic they are, no matter how much money you raise, no matter how many […]

In a week that has already brought its share of bad news for the federal Head Start program, the Detroit Free Press throws another log on the fire. According to the paper, the scandalously incompetent and corrupt city government in Detroit awarded a three year “no-bid” contract to what, if the critics are right, looks […]

A rare piece of good news from the Rust Belt: residents of states like Pennsylvania and Ohio will be a little warmer this winter as they cling bitterly, in the President’s famous phrase, to their God and their guns.The extensive shale gas deposits discovered deep underground in Pennsylvania and Ohio are making (natural) gas cheaper […]

California is beginning to look a lot like Versaillies circa 1789. In Adelanto Elementary School District in Desert Trails, parents are taking advantage of a new state law that allows a 50-percent-plus majority to “force a district to close a school, convert it to a charter or replace the principal and the teachers.” According to the […]

More signs of change in the country formerly known as Myanmar: Today, the government signed a peace agreement with the Karen rebel group, which was part of a decades-long insurgency. Earlier this week, opposition leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi announced she would run for Parliament in April. Her party was excluded from politics for twenty […]

An audit released recently by the Bank of Greece accuses Lavrentis Lavrentiadis, the head of Proton Bank, of embezzlement, corruption, and fraud. Prosecutors allege that Lavrentiadis turned Proton Bank into a criminal enterprise, eventually stealing over 600 million euros. All this took place during Greece’s financial scramble, while the government was borrowing millions of dollars […]

One piece of good news about global warming (apart from the reduced chance for a new Ice Age anytime soon): as the planet warms, lizards get smarter.“Climate change might not be so bad for these guys,” said Joshua Amiel, one of the researchers on a study that compared the predatory and survival instincts of lizards […]