The war of words and water cannons in the East China Sea took a dramatic turn this week when news broke that a Chinese military vessel locked its fire control radar on a Japanese ship and helicopter. Prominent Japanese officials blasted the move as an unprovoked escalation, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe saying “it was a […]

The economic news in Egypt is getting worse. The country’s foreign currency reserves fell by 10 percent last month, according to the BBC: The [Egyptian Central Bank] said reserves fell by $1.4bn during the month from $15bn to $13.6bn amid continued political unrest and violent street protests. […]The central bank gave no reason for the fall […]

Having put in place a way to do it, we must pursue a range of institutional reforms.Were we to institutionalize a periodic governmental design review, among the first candidates for reform, among a great many, should be the following: Redesign the Department of Homeland Security The creation of DHS was not a conceptual mistake, as […]

Texas Governor Rick Perry has taken the fight for new jobs straight to California’s airwaves. The Lone Star governor is out with a 30-second advertisement on radio channels across California’s major media markets: “Building a business is tough,” says the governor in his Texas twang, “but I hear building a business in California is next […]

It’s official: “China is extremely concerned by the way things are going [in North Korea],” said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman today. “We oppose any behavior which may exacerbate the situation and any acts which are not beneficial towards the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”The Communist Party-run Global Times editorial today shows how Chinese nationalists are […]

A confidential legal review has just decided that the President should have broad power to issue preemptive cyber attacks, says the NYT.This review comes at a time when the pace of attacks on sensitive computer systems has picked up. The Energy Department, two American power stations, the NYT, the WSJ, and Washington Post have all been recent […]

It’s finally happening: The U.S. Postal Service is expected to announce a new plan to cut Saturday mail delivery by August, reports the NYT.These plans have been floated by the USPS for some time now as a solution to the agency’s chronic financial woes, but nothing has happened yet because of the need for congressional approval for such a move. Thus […]

Like many others, Via Meadia welcomes the development of MOOCs (massive open online courses) like those offered by Coursera and EdX. But there’s a problem: we’ve noticed that many of online ed’s biggest boosters have often never experienced an online class for themselves and so tend to overlook some serious problems in the platforms that are out […]

The most unpopular governor in the country, Illinois’s Pat Quinn, will stand up to give the State of the State speech this evening, and he won’t be bearing good news. Due mostly to a crisis of unfunded pensions, Illinois has the worst credit outlook in the country, having been downgraded a dozen times by credit agencies […]

Is rampant street violence coming to Tunisia too? Could be, as opposition leader Chokri Belaid was shot and killed in front of his home in Tunis today. An outspoken critic of the  Islamist party Ennahda, which is widely considered moderate but has at times been indulgent of the radical Salafis, Belaid had received several death […]