Beijing’s leadership is getting tough on environmental issues. Last week, President Xi Jinping vowed to hold officials who harm the environment “accountable for a lifetime.” And top officials have proposed a cap on carbon emissions for China’s next five-year plan, starting in 2016.  That news has greens in a tizzy, and has boosted their hopes for a global climate […]

Argentina and Venezuela may one day grow weary of being global laughingstocks and turn to sensible policies, but at least for now the socialist dream lives on.The BBC reports that product scarcity has forced Venezuela’s “only wine maker” to stop selling wine to the Catholic Church, which is already suffering from a shortage of consecrated […]

A confidential report prepared by the Defense Science Board for the Pentagon found that the Chinese have been hacking American defense companies and government departments to a much greater extent than previously reported. The Washington Post got an advance look at the report, and it’s not pretty.Mark Stokes, the executive director of a think tank focused […]

There were two perplexing details in this morning’s announcement that the EU had agreed* to lift the arms embargo on Syria’s rebels. First, William Hague very clearly indicated that the UK (and presumably France) had no immediate plans to arm the rebels. But then Russia jumped in with a strident complaint. If the EU decision […]

Here’s a reason you probably won’t hear to explain Obama’s reluctance to do anything substantive in Syria: his Libya policy is more and more clearly emerging as a big ugly flop, and it has made him gun-shy.The International Energy Association is now predicting serious oil supply problems in Libya, where the security situation continues to […]

The African Union is telling the UN, and specifically the International Criminal Court, to butt out of African affairs. Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, also chairman of the AU, complained in particular about the ICC’s charges against (now President) Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto over their roles in tribal violence stemming from Kenya’s 2007 election. The […]

Update: June 3, 2013 (see below). We might have thought that it would be hard to top the Obama Administration’s recent fiascos with respect to the administration of justice. So far the hit parade includes the IRS’s “unintentional” persecution of small-fry Tea Party groups, the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s)  warrantless spying on a score […]

All bad things, too, come to an end. Eventually.That at least is the tone of this morning’s article in the FT on Greece’s tentative recovery. After six years of a brutal recession that’s seen the country’s output shrink by a third and its joblessness rate get as high as 27%, Greece is apparently poised to post […]

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, has been making noise about peace with India, but how far will the army let him go?Immediately after his party won Pakistan’s election, Sharif invited Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, to his swearing-in ceremony. “Let there be no doubt that we will not allow terrorism to be exported to […]

Prince George’s County, Maryland stands out from the rest of the country in that it is among the most affluent majority-black counties in the US. But despite its uniqueness, it is quickly falling prey to a common trend—middle class parents are pulling their children out of public schools and putting them in private competitors that […]