The US Embassy in Cairo is warning Americans to stay away from the Egyptian pyramids. This is bad news for Egypt’s tourism industry: Vendors at Egypt’s pyramids who are desperate to make money in a deepening economic crisis are using aggressive and even violent means to get tourists to give them some business, frequenters of […]

American high-speed rail boosters often yearn that the rail networks of Europe and China could be brought to our shores. A look across the pond suggests that some of these “model” high-speed rail systems aren’t doing so hot. Consider the Netherlands, which is now dealing with the fallout of its own botched high-speed rail project.The […]

Over 4,000 Hezbollah fighters have taken position around Aleppo, according to sources in the Free Syrian Army. Large numbers of Hezbollah fighters are already battling Syrian rebels in and around Qusayr. Reports suggest as many as 75 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in that battle so far, the highest death toll for the “Party of […]

Computer hardware isn’t just getting more powerful; it’s getting more efficient. Intel gives us the latest example of this with their new Haswell chip, which will boost processing power while significantly improving battery life. The BBC reports: The firm says the new design of the family’s CPU cores is capable of delivering a 15% boost […]

The news that Russia will ferry its “state-of-the-art” S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Butcher Assad in Syria may be claptrap. Israeli military officials were dubious from the get-go about Assad’s claims to have already received the first installments of the Russian weapons package, with the Israeli Defense Minister going so far as to say that […]

Sixty-four percent of uninsured Americans haven’t yet decided if they will buy insurance by January 1, 2014, when Obamacare’s individual mandate goes into effect. Polling company Princeton Survey Research Associates International recently conducted the survey on behalf of an insurance price comparison website. The reaction by the senior insurance analyst at the website (InsuranceQuotes.com) hints at the danger this […]

If the video above doesn’t have you marveling at the creativity of humanity, we feel for you: the 21st century is going to be rough.The Israeli company OrCam offers the latest proof that the tiny, embattled Middle Eastern state is a leader in world-class technology. OrCam has created a pair of eyeglasses that allows blind and […]

In this graph are contained the hopes and fears of the world’s petro-states. That black line represents the Brent price for a barrel of crude oil, a benchmark used for European, African, and Middle Eastern oil. Countries whose fiscal breakeven oil price—the price at which oil needs to be in order for the country to […]

Syria’s civil war is bleeding over the border into its fragile neighbor to the west. As many as six people were killed in Tripoli, and dozens more were wounded. Reports suggest that snipers in the city center were to blame for some of the casualties. A dozen people were killed in fighting between Hezbollah guerrillas and […]

Public pension funds are some of the largest shareholders in the country, and increasingly they love to throw their weight around. That’s what we learn from the Manhattan Institute’s Proxy Monitor, at least, which reports that public employee pension funds in New York City and New York state are branching out into social activism issues […]