Fidel Castro is fading away as nature achieves what 50 years of American policy did not. The FT reports: Mr Castro of late had become a mere shadow in the background who had been neither seen nor heard from for months, leading to the latest spate of death rumours and his retort: get used to […]

South African government officials gingerly express hope that the worst of the crisis is over as the national union of mineworkers announces a deal over wages and miners continue to go back to work.The FT reports: Pravin Gordhan, South Africa’s finance minister, predicted on Thursday that the crisis in the country’s mining sector was past […]

The ceasefire in Syria didn’t last long, Reuters reports: Opposition activists in Syria said forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had renewed their heavy bombardment of major cities on Saturday, further undermining a truce meant to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha religious holiday.The conflict is spinning out of control, causing serious problems for its neighbors […]

The violence in Burma that began earlier this week has gotten much, much worse. Burmese security forces have begun to use force to stop the clashes between the stateless Rohingya Muslim community and the Buddhists who are trying to displace them. As a result, more than 80 have now been killed. Meanwhile the tens of thousands […]

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution points us to an interesting development in higher-education taking place in Florida. Concerned by the growing student-debt bubble and the number of liberal-arts graduates who can’t find jobs, Governor Rick Scott is considering a plan to guide more students into the more technical STEM fields, where job opportunities are relatively abundant. […]

As with most presidential contenders, Obama and Romney don’t agree on much. But as a recent piece in the New York Times points out, there is one notable exception: Energy and climate change. Despite the fact that both candidates believe in anthropogenic climate change, neither one has discussed plans to address the issue using green policies. Instead, […]

The Washington Post has been investigating the Obama administration’s expansion of the conflict formerly known as the global war on terror, and the article that ran in today’s paper focuses on a rapidly growing remote drone airfield and military base in Djibouti called Camp Lemonnier. Increasingly, the orders to find, track or kill those people […]

Reuters has some truly shocking news from Greece. Via Meadia, too, is shocked, shocked to learn that Athens will fail to meet its debt targets for the umpteenth time in a row. A new IMF report released Thursday suggests that, even under the most optimistic scenario, Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio will be well above the target level of […]

Politicians are less likely to kiss babies than to threaten to shoot them these days. Jerry Brown, who is facing increasing opposition to his plan to raise taxes, has a message to voters: without a huge tax increase on the rich, schools will be closed for weeks.Brown cited a higher authority to defend his stance: […]

Reports from North Korea are always hard to come by, but The Telegraph has some juicy details about newly-installed Kim Jong Un’s mysterious army purge. According to reports, Kim recently executed the vice minister of the army in a most unconventional fashion: Ordering him to stand still and hitting him with a mortar round. His crime? Having […]