President Obama has attracted a lot of criticism for his appointment of Caroline Kennedy as US ambassador to Japan. On this one, we stand with the White House. It’s a smart appointment and one that many Japanese will welcome as an assurance of continued strong US and White House interest in this important relationship.There are two types […]

A juror in the Trayvon Martin case has spoken out on television, stating that George Zimmerman got away with murder. Maddy—only her first name is known—said that she wanted to convict Zimmerman, but couldn’t find a good legal reason to do so. NYT reports: “A lot of us wanted to find something bad, something we […]

Egypt’s economy has stabilized this month as loans from the Gulf Arab monarchies start to kick in. $12 billion in aid that was promised immediately following the coup has by now stabilized food and fuel prices and boosted supply, normalized the currency, and stocks are surging, the WSJ reports. That should help Cairo get through […]

A new poll indicates that Hispanic immigrants, just like the many immigrants before them, are assimilating in pretty quick order. More Hispanics get their news from English language sources than from Spanish ones, and the gap is growing as time goes by. Pew has more: The rise in use of English news sources has been driven […]

Mexico’s state-owned oil and gas monopoly, Pemex, is a terribly run organization. It has added 22,000 jobs since 2004, yet production has fallen 23 percent. Mexico’s government uses Pemex as its own personal piggy bank, deriving roughly a third of its revenue from the company. That leaves few pesos left over for Pemex to reinvest […]

China has an air quality problem. About 1.2 million people died as a result of air pollution in 2010. World Bank report estimates that smoggy skies cost the country 5.78 percent of its GDP every year. China is investing heavily in clean energy sources, but it still burns nearly half of the world’s coal. Last […]

A man killed two Chinese government officials and injured four others at a family planning bureau on Wednesday. Earlier the man had gone to the bureau to register his fourth child but had failed to pay the exorbitant fee for having more than one child and was turned away. In China, your child must be […]

Like anyone following Detroit’s downfall, we had heard about the debate raging over whether or not to sell off the Detroit Institute of Arts’ vast art collection. We hadn’t been paying attention to the actual numbers in play. John Fund at National Review rounds up some estimates: The Detroit Free Press asked New York and Michigan art dealers […]

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its International Energy Outlook today, and it’s chock-full of excellent data. It points to a number of global energy trends, and the overarching narrative that emerges is the economic ascendence of the developing world (especially China and India) and the sharp rise in energy usage expected to accompany that […]

The congressional debate over indexing federal student loan interest rates appears to be nearing conclusion. On July 1st the rate for future borrowers doubled due to congressional inaction. Now a retroactive measure to address this is wending its way through Congress. On Wednesday the Senate voted 81-18 to pass a bill that will link college loan […]