If there’s one thing you need to read today, it’s the transcript of General Michael Hayden’s interview with the Australian Financial Review. To say that excerpting it does it no justice is a massive understatement. Any VM readers interested in geopolitics, Asia, China’s rise, and cyber-espionage owe it to themselves to make their way through the […]

Having closed 11 percent of the city’s public schools in May, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has now been forced to fire 2,000 employees, including 1,000 teachers—half of whom were tenured. The Chicago Tribune reports: “We’re not going to be able to cut our way out of this crisis,” [CPS Spokeswoman Becky] Carroll said. “Our revenues […]

Yesterday President Obama came out swinging in defense of his signature health care law, but among his top talking points is a comparison that has been really distorting the ACA debate. The LA Times reports: Obama touted recent news from New York, California, Oregon and other states that have reported that insurance companies will charge […]

Newly independent South Sudan has lowered its daily oil output by 20 percent in response to Sudan’s accusations that its new southern neighbor has supported rebel groups. Sudan has threatened to shut down the pipelines that travel through its territory unless the South agrees to stop fomenting rebellion. This comes just months after the two […]

Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Arakan, an organization with links to al-Qaeda, recently declared Burma a new front for jihad in response to escalating ethnic tensions there. The group includes youth from Burma, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan, all of whom were trained in Karachi. After a central al-Qaeda office announced the group’s arrival in Burma, violence broke out, as the Long […]

For some Iranians, the recent elections were a hopeful signal; for many outsiders, they were a signal for cautious optimism. But there’s one country that has good reasons to be skeptical of any good news from Tehran: namely, Israel. That skepticism has driven Israel to search far and wide for geopolitical partners in places that […]

Update: Detroit files for bankruptcy. More thoughts tomorrow. Below is our post from earlier today.Detroit, one of the 20th century’s great American cities, is now almost certain to stagger through the early 21st century in Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The WSJ reports that the chances of out-of-court settlement are scant. Emergency manager Kevyn Orr is unlikely to […]

Yesterday the House passed a measure to delay both the employer and the individual mandate, but its timing may be a bit off. The vote came one day after New York city officials reported that health care premiums under Obamacare will be “at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available in New York.” Needless […]

The World Bank has released a report estimating that India’s environmental problems are costing the country $80 billion every year. The report blames pollution and land degradation for the country’s limited food and water supply, child deaths, expensive medical problems, and even environmental disasters such as last month’s flooding. India has largely ignored the environmental […]

On Sunday Japan’s Parliament will hold upper house elections, and the ruling party of nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to win comfortably. If that’s the case, it will be a strong endorsement of his policies in the eight months since he assumed office. Those policies—a stronger military and a more nationalist, more antagonistic […]