More Westerners are participating in Syria’s civil war than ever fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia according to intelligence officials who spoke to the New York Times. Some worrisome statistics: Classified estimates from Western intelligence services and unclassified assessments from government and independent experts put the number of fighters from Europe, North America and Australia […]

With Israel’s cabinet having voted to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, the headlines this morning are particularly optimistic about prospects for Israeli-Palestinian talks. The NY Times: “Israel and Palestinians Set to Resume Peace Talks, U.S. Announces”. The Washington Post: “Peace talks set to begin after Israel agrees to free 104 Palestinian prisoners”.These are all a little misleading: Israelis and […]

How insecure is our energy infrastructure? This Wednesday at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, security researchers are set to show off an exploit of a newly discovered vulnerability in a wireless sensor widely used in oil, gas and water processing plants: The new research on wireless sensors found flaws in the way they […]

Media reports indicate that the White House is rethinking President Obama’s travel to Moscow in early September for a bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin immediately before Russia hosts the G20 summit in St. Petersburg. Obama indeed should not go to meet with Putin, but the reasons for such a cancelation go well beyond those suggested […]

The biggest news of the week was obviously the royal baby: here we look at the politics of choosing a name for England’s third-in-line for the throne. Perhaps just as interesting were new revelations about Anthony Weiner’s continued sexting: here we show that there isn’t a “bad” Weiner who sexts and a “good” Weiner who […]

The classical role of satire was not only to poke fun at groups or people, but also to use humor to point towards an important truth. Satire done well is often hard to come by, and we think today’s satirists often fall too much on the purely critical side. But this bit from the Onion—a publication […]

China’s shale oil reserves are the third largest in the world, but to this point they’ve remained largely undeveloped and unexplored. Beijing is hoping to turn that around, and earlier this week US energy company Hess Corp signed a shared production contract with PetroChina to begin work on China’s shale oil reserves. Reuters reports: Hu […]

The GOP civil war is on: on Friday New Jersey Governor Chris Christie directed some sharp remarks in Sen. Rand Paul’s direction over national security strategy. NYT: “This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,” Mr. Christie said on a panel with […]

About every five years, the Bureau of Economic Analysis re-evaluates its metrics for measuring various aspects of the economy as data and tools change and improve. This upcoming Wednesday, the NY Times reports, Bureau officials will be undertaking one such re-evaluation. And the revisions this time around are a pretty big deal: [The Bureau] plans to […]

As cost increases in China and concerns over labor conditions in Bangladesh push manufacturing firms away, India is gearing up its own garment industry to try to capitalize on the opportunity and boost its faltering economy. India has so far failed to fully take advantage of its huge potential labor force living out in the countryside. […]