China is building a military and administrative outpost on Woody Island in the South China Sea, and according to Reuters will soon base a 5,000 ton coast guard vessel there to patrol disputed ocean territory. Woody Island, called Yongxing in China, is the seat of the Chinese prefecture of Sansha. Several nearby island groups come under Sansha’s administration, including the Spratly Islands, the Paracel Islands, and the Macclesfield Bank, all of which are also claimed by Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, or some combination of all the above.

To see Delhi’s Chief Minister being beaten up by the city’s own police force is a bizarre sight indeed. Even though Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of India’s upstart Aam Adami Party (AAP), is now in office, he has been sleeping on the streets for the past few days along with hundreds of his supporters, demanding police reforms.

Known as Taliban Khan by his detractors, Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, has been the most vocal supporter of dialogue between the state and the Taliban to end an insurgency that has so far cost upwards of 50,000 lives. His insistence on negotiations has made him look desperate and weak as the Taliban continue to wreak havoc across the country, killing 40 people in separate bomb attacks over this weekend alone.

Anyone who hasn’t been scared off a PhD program yet by reports of thousands of grads competing for scarce tenure-track positions and the growing specter of grad school debt should take a look at this New York Times profile of a recent grad looking to make it as a professor in New York. Like many of his peers, James Hoff has spent the past year and a half since he graduated piecing together adjunct lecturer gigs at various schools while applying for highly competitive full-time jobs. These gigs are unstable, low-paying and offer no benefits, leaving him in a precarious situation.

China is secretly at work on its second (and first homemade) aircraft carrier in the coastal city of Dalian, according to reports. Construction is expected to be completed in six years, and officials say China will eventually have at least four such carriers. Alongside the new aircraft carrier in Dalian are two advanced missile destroyers, also under construction. The new ships will help bolster the power and reach of the Chinese navy as it seeks to take control of nearby seas and project power farther abroad.

In Washington State, a group of legislators is taking steps toward a defined-benefit pension plan for public workers. A bill proposed today by a Republican State Senator would offer public-sector workers a $10,000 signing bonus if they switch from their defined-benefit plans to a defined-contribution plan. The bill is modeled after a similar measure going into effect at Boeing, and although it is modest in scope—limited to only 2,000 workers—it could be a sign of bigger things to come.

ITT Educational Services, one of the largest for-profit schools in the country, has gotten itself into hot water with the SEC and CPFB for its student lending practices, and the investigation could be a sign of big trouble ahead for the for-profit market. Like all for-profit higher-ed companies, ITT needs to make sure that no more than 90 percent of its income comes from federal loans in order to remain eligible for those loans. Unfortunately, the increasing student debt burden and declining wages have pushed up defaults, scaring off private lenders and making it more difficult for the school to meet this 90 percent threshold.

China’s Arabic-language television and radio outreach efforts don’t compare to America’s in traditional measures like audience size. But sometimes how many people are tuning in isn’t as important as who is tuning in.

When Ahn Jung-geun killed Hirobumi Ito in 1909, he immediately became a lasting icon in the history of Korean resistance to Japan, and he is celebrated as a hero to this day. Ito was a four-time prime minister of Japan and was serving as the first resident-governor of Japan’s colony in Korea when he was killed. Ahn shot him dead at Harbin train station in northeast China, and it is Harbin that is the focus of a fiery diplomatic fight over Ahn’s legacy.

Somewhere, somehow, someone wasn’t keeping their eye on the ball. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general announced that Iran was now invited to the Geneva peace conference on Syria, leaving the U.S. with a bit of a mess on its hands.