The Russian energy firm Gazprom is increasingly off its stride in Europe, its largest export market. Bulgaria has managed to negotiate a 20 percent price cut in its new ten-year contract with the gas giant, an unprecedented reversal of fortune from only a short time ago. Gazprom had cut off gas to the Ukraine in […]

India and China remain locked in a standoff in the high Himalayas. Chinese troops erected a fifth military tent at the camp they set up 16 days ago, 19 kilometers inside Indian territory in the remote northern region of Ladakh. “High placed sources” told India’s Zee News that the Chinese troops are unlikely to withdraw.The […]

Newly elected Italian PM Enrico Letta is getting bolder and more assertive by the minute, judging by his remarks at a recent Berlin press conference. According to the FT, Letta said that a single European currency doesn’t do enough to promote economic growth in member countries. He stated that more political union is needed to help […]

Nearly half of all students arrive to college woefully unprepared academically. Now some colleges are looking to massively open online courses (MOOCs) to close the gap. The New York Times reports: While [MOOCs] have enrolled millions of students around the world, most who enroll never start a single assignment, and very few complete the courses. […]

According to reports, the Nigerian military massacred hundreds of civilians in an orgy of bloodletting in a village called Baga on the shores of Lake Chad. Adam Nossiter has the grisly details in the NYT: Days later, the survivors’ faces tensed at the memory of the grim evening: soldiers dousing thatched-roof homes with gasoline, setting […]

Greenhouse gas emissions were down by 0.7 percent across the industrialized world in 2011, according to a new data analysis by Reuters. The Guardian reports on the leading causes of the drop: “For the United States, it’s mainly a shift from coal to gas in power plants,” said Steffen Kallbekken, research director at the Centre for International Climate and […]

The Coconut Fragrance Princess, a Chinese cruise ship, embarked on Sunday for the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. It is the first such venture to the tiny island group that is the focus of an international dispute between Vietnam, Taiwan, and China. The ship will tour a handful of islands and guests will be […]

Forget botched surgery and hospital-borne infections: the biggest danger during your time as a patient is when your doctor is talking to you. The WSJ reports on a new study out of John Hopkins:   Researchers at Johns Hopkins University looked at more than 350,000 malpractice claims over 25 years. They found that diagnostic errors—defined as missed, […]

Clever Iranian sleuths have cracked the secret ingredient of the Jewish plan for world domination: sorcery. Mehdi Taeb, a well-known cleric and close confidante of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, disclosed to a group of students recently that “the Jews” unleashed their powers of witchcraft upon the Iranian elections of 2009. Thankfully, their occult schemes […]

To understand the stranglehold the blue model puts on growth, consider the case of Uber, the service powered by a smartphone app that makes it much easier to get a cab and pay the fare by credit card. New York City has belatedly approved Uber under a “pilot program” that will allow only a limited […]