Over the past few months, California has come under fire for its use of capital appreciation bonds to fund school repairs and expansions. These exotic bonds allowed pols to pour money into schools without raising taxes. The catch was that when bills come due decades later, taxpayers will be on the hook for as much as […]

Dai Xu, a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, made a preposterous claim on Weibo yesterday: The national leadership should not pay too much attention to it [bird flu]. Or else, it’ll be like in 2003 with SARS! At that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity […]

America is the leader of the global shale energy boom, and the rest of the world is racing to catch up. But countries like China and Australia are having difficulty replicating the successes of the US. Whether due to providence, dumb luck, or plain old technological prowess, the US shale revolution just isn’t easily exported. […]

If you want cheap health care, go to Utah. That’s just one takeaway from this infographic at the WSJ, which charts average health care spending across the country. Washington, DC, spends the most, at $10,349 per person, and Utah the least, at $5,031. Check out the whole graph to see the spread and how it correlates with the […]

She was, beyond a doubt, the greatest British political leader since Winston Churchill and, like him, she was cordially hated by many grandees of the party she led.The entire British establishment, from the royal family down, often wished she would just go away. In the end, a Cabinet cabal proved too much for her and […]

Is China’s economy in trouble? That’s what most outside experts on the world’s second-biggest economy will tell you. Today Fitch, the global ratings agency, endorsed that judgment.The FT reports: “Fitch on Wednesday downgraded the country’s long-term local currency rating from AA- to A+, citing a number of “underlying structural weaknesses” in the Chinese economy, including low […]

A catastrophic oil spill in Arkansas last month has breathed new life into the movement to block the Keystone Pipeline. In the wake of the destruction, environmentalist groups are arguing that the pipeline should be put on hold pending more environmental reviews, or nixed entirely. To many, the Arkansas disaster is proof that pipelines are […]

Via Joe Wiesenthal and Paul Krugman, we see that France’s borrowing costs have plummeted recently, down to 1.71 percent yesterday—almost the same level at which the United States borrows. Wiesenthal surmised that, despite the floundering Hollande government, investors have internalized that France truly is too big to fail and that the ECB stands foursquare behind it.Maybe. […]

Another stiff environmental challenge for China: air pollution in its biggest cities is chasing away the country’s best and brightest. After all, why would someone want to live in a city like Beijing, that routinely sees air pollution go literally off the charts?The Financial Times reports that the better-off have been plotting their escape on China’s social […]

Tension between Christians and Muslims in Cairo broke out into lengthy street battles this weekend. Four Coptic Christians and one Muslim were killed on Saturday, and during the funeral for the fallen Christians on Sunday a huge fight broke out when “residents of the area” attacked the mourning party, which included women and children. The […]