China’s pension problem may be even worse than we previously thought. The country’s pension systems were already facing high debts and low annual returns, but in the past year, growth has slowed by an alarming 71 percent, and many areas have already resorted to raiding the future retirement funds of future workers to pay pensions for the currently retired. This comes despite the fact that many private companies contribute 20 percent of their employees’ wages to the funds.

Facing massive losses and declining mail volumes, Canada Post, the country’s primary mail delivery service, has announced that it will begin phasing out door-to-door delivery in urban areas in an effort to return to solvency. Meanwhile, Congress continues to forbid the USPS from making any changes to its organizational structure despite even bigger losses.

There’s a popular feeling in the air that America has become decadent. Contrasting Harry Potter to the Hunger Games shows what a difference a decade can make.

Randy Schekman, a Noble-prize winning biologist, is protesting the way top science journals push shoddy, flashy research by refusing to publish in them. Sheckman’s protest might just be a flash in the pan, of course, but if it’s indicative of any sort of wider frustration in the field, other leading scientists might be able to bring some collective pressure on journals to tighten things up a bit.

Sometime last Thursday, the US Navy said in a statement today, an American guided missile cruiser was on course to collide with a Chinese warship in the South China Sea. The close call between the USS Cowpens and the PLA warship is a sign that tension in east Asia is not going away, and that the risk of a dangerous incident is growing, not easing. And with countries throughout the region building up navies, coast guards, and maritime air forces, the area is only going to get more crowded.

Millennials don’t differ from their parents all in much in their living and buying patterns: they still intend to settle down in a house in the suburbs. At least here, the much-vaunted “generational shifts” between the Boomers and Gen Y aren’t in evidence. But those concerned about the importance of density to economic growth needn’t worry. Millennials can keep moving to the suburbs in their thirties without removing themselves out of the “creative class” economy.

For the first time since 2001, the State Bank of Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves fell to $2.9 billion, prompting a mini-economic crisis in the country. Pakistan now has barely enough in the kitty to pay its import bill for three weeks. As a result, the inflation rate has gotten even higher and the Pakistani rupee continues to tank, putting further pressure on finances.

How corrupt is the Yanukovich government? Extremely, says Anders Åslund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics: “The Ukrainian government’s budget deficit of 6 percent of GDP or $11 billion is driven by what is commonly called the “Yanukovich family” siphoning big money from the state budget.”

Yesterday the Belgium Senate approved, 50-17, a bill allowing terminally ill children to opt for euthanasia. This story shows just how quickly allowing limited mercy killing for terminally ill adults can lead to wider political and social consequences. The parallel case of the Netherlands, where doctors are never prosecuted for euthanizing children under age 12, paints a scary picture of euthanasia’s future.

The Education Department has just released an early draft of its plan to limit federal aid to colleges, and for-profit schools are squarely in the spotlight. Under the new proposal, for-profit colleges and career training programs at community colleges whose average graduate debt exceeds certain benchmarks will become ineligible for Pell Grants and other forms of federal aid. This is a decent start, but it could go much further.