There will be a weekend-long ceasefire in Syria, Reuters reports: “On the occasion of the blessed Eid al-Adha, the general command of the army and armed forces announces a halt to military operations on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, from Friday morning . . . until Monday,” an army statement read on state […]

Dysfunctional politics and a dysfunctional economy make for a toxic combination, as Japan is finding out. The government has been a house divided since 2010, when the LDP won back the Upper House but failed to take the Lower House. Now Japan faces its own yearly debt-ceiling gridlock, as the government needs to borrow almost […]

Pundits transfixed by fluctuating poll numbers are starting to wonder: What if nobody wins?In what’s looking to be an extremely tight election, a few votes in a few precincts may make the difference between a second Obama term or a Romney presidency. If neither side wins decisively, we could see a slew of recounts and […]

It’s now been nearly one year to the day since the official end of the Libyan civil war. What a difference that year has made for nearby Mali, where Islamic militants now control a significant amount of territory in the northern part of the country, partially due to weapons and training acquired during the Libya […]

Laotian officials announced Thursday that China and Laos have agreed on a railway project that would cross the Laotian highlands to the Chinese border. The WSJ reports: Laos’s Energy and Mining Minister Soulivong Dalavong said in an interview that under the new agreement, which is expected to be signed within days, Chinese banks will provide […]

A reasonably sentient reader might think that between globalization/automation causes and our political/institutional dysfunction, there is nothing left to account for in order to explain what’s wrong with the United States these days. That would be wrong. In my view, more of the variance that explains our parlous present circumstances lies in this third group […]

Russia’s highest ranking military leader accused Syrian rebels of using U.S.-made, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, as the BBC reports: “We have reliable information that Syrian militants have foreign portable anti-aircraft missile systems, including those made in the USA… it should be cleared up who delivered them,” Gen Makarov told journalists in Russia.There have been earlier unconfirmed […]

Japanese and Chinese officials are holding meetings together, trying to turn down the noise around disputed islands in the East China Sea, the WSJ reports: The meeting between the No. 2 foreign ministry officials took place in Shanghai over the weekend, the official said. That followed a meeting between two diplomats one rung down on […]

As we mentioned yesterday, the visit to Gaza by the emir of Qatar signals the beginning of a new era in Palestinian politics. The emir promised $400 million in reconstruction projects for the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, while Fatah—the old guard of Palestinian politics—is slipping into irrelevancy.Once upon a time, the secular-leaning Fatah led the Palestinian […]

Three states form the base of Democratic political power in the United States: California, New York and Illinois. All three states are locked in an accelerating economic, demographic and social decline; all three hope that they can stave off looming disaster at home by exporting the policies that have ruined them to the rest of […]