Pew has released a series of new report on global religious freedom, and the results aren’t pretty: religious hostility shot up to a six-year high in 2012. If you’ve been reading the news, you’ll know that religious violence has spiked in the Middle East and in African countries like the Central African Republic. So the increase in countries with high or very high levels of religious tension (20 percent in 2007 to 33 percent today) might not be surprising. But Pew also uncovered some things that may hit closer to home for Westerners.

Graduate programs have been churning out far more PhDs than there are available academic positions, and on top of a desperate job hunt aspiring PhDs increasingly have another problem to worry about: student debt. Unlike other degrees, PhD programs often allow students to attend school for free, receiving tuition waivers, stipends, and fellowships to cover their expenses. But in some disciplines, at least, this is beginning to change as programs accept more students without funding, or provide only meager stipends.

It hasn’t been a great day for India’s ruling Congress Party. First Rahul Gandhi, the popular scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has ruled India off and on for decades, was ruled out of the running for the premiership in the country’s upcoming national election. Then tragedy struck: the wife of Shashi Tharoor, the Indian Minister of State for Human Resource Development who is well-liked inside and outside India, was found dead in a Delhi hotel room. She apparently took her own life.

While Obama is desperately trying to bring back the manufacturing economy of the mid-20th century, a completely different industry is taking off right under his nose. This industry is, of course, tech, where new startups providing all manner of services are appearing left and right, promising to radically reshape the workforce. As software development and new business formation has been streamlined, innovation is happening faster than ever before.

How might a decision not to buy Obamacare insurance play itself out? Over at Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz printed an email he received from a healthy thirty-two year old who has decided to pass on getting insurance. Unsurprisingly, many readers were disgusted at the Brooklynite’s email, saying it was his own bad choices that had put him in this position. But young adults are suffering the effects of, among other things, high costs of living in many cities, exploding educational costs, a dysfunctional health care system, and a poor job market—all problems caused or made worse by Boomers and the blue model systems they support

The protestors were marching past a university in central Bangkok toward the opposition leaders’ main rabble-rousing stage when the grenade exploded. 36 injured people were rushed to nearby hospitals. Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban was in the crowd but unhurt. Minutes later, on stage, Suthep railed against the government agents he says were responsible for the attack: “We are not afraid and we will fight on,” he thundered.

If you’re one of the 40 million Target shoppers whose credit card information was compromised last month, you’ve probably been wondering who, exactly has control of your data. Although we still have no conclusive data, a new report found that much of the code the hackers used was written in Russian, and many are speculating that the criminals in Eastern Europe and Central Asia may be behind this. If the Russian Mob is this good, just think what the world’s governments are up to.

Rather than passive-aggressive–and sometimes just aggressive–tit for tat between China and India, the Chinese ambassador to India has chosen a softer tack, penning a couple of soothing op-eds in mainstream Indian newspapers rather than the usual angry rants issued by the foreign office in Beijing.

After promising to create a series of “manufacturing institutes” to bring manufacturing jobs back to America almost exactly a year ago, President Obama is finally ready to open the first one. On a visit to North Carolina this week, Obama announced to a group of college students that the first of these institutes will soon open in their state thanks to a $70 million grant from the Department of Energy and a the contributions of a number of manufacturing firms.

Wikileaks struck again earlier this week, releasing a draft report of the Environment Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The report was written in much the same style as the edicts issued after the annual meeting of the do-nothing UNFCCC: a lot of verbiage surrounding what countries should be doing to protect the environment and stave off climate change, but no binding resolutions to back up these suggestions. As predictable as this lack of enforcement mechanisms should have been, various green groups are shocked, shocked, that the enormously complex trade agreement didn’t include green provisions with any real bite.