One of the ongoing perplexities of President Obama’s Syria policy has been the stark contrast between his muscular rhetoric and halting, hesitant actions. On the one hand, he has insisted that the country’s dictator Bashar al-Assad “must” go and has predicted that his fall is all but assured. But on the other, he has thus far […]

Red tape may soon be a thing of the past in Los Angeles. According to Yahoo, the city has just released a new app that lets citizens communicate directly with city officials: [It] will let residents report potholes, pay city utility bills and look up dog parks at the tap of a virtual button.Instead of calling […]

The sweet scent of cheap gas is luring manufacturing back to the United States. The German chemicals company BASF is one of many energy-intensive firms looking to open plants stateside. The Washington Post reports: Here in Ludwigshafen[, Germany], many people view the United States as the land of the future. Since 2009, BASF has channeled more than […]

Greece’s radical neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, has become the country’s third greatest political force, according to polls. Now it’s seeking to put down roots “wherever there are Greeks,” including in Germany, Australia, Canada, and the US. The Guardian reports: “Like-minded groups in Europe and Russia have given the party ideological, and sometimes financial, support to […]

Free online education is starting to make a lot of people nervous, and for good reason. If done right, MOOCs could pose a serious threat to many current colleges and universities. Andrew Delbanco writes in The New Republic: The dark side of this bright dream is the fear that online education could burst what appears to […]

28,000 rivers have disappeared from China over the past few decades, according to an official study by China’s Ministry of Water Resources. More than half the rivers with catchment areas of over 100 square kilometers have disappeared since the 1990s. Many of the rivers that remain are poisoned by pollution. So is the air. Outdoor air pollution led to 1.2 million […]

A new gene therapy has been found to cure leukemia in eight days. Five patients with a fatal diagnosis received the treatment, and only one of them succumbed. A doctor from Sloane-Kettering will now lead a second trial with fifty patients.That isn’t the only good news for the fight against cancer. The WSJ recently reported on a new attempt to compile information […]

Teachers have come out looking pretty good—too good—in evaluations conducted by states across the country. According to the NYT, the new evaluations, instituted by education reformers to “weed out weak performers”, haven’t uncovered very many weeds: In Florida, 97 percent of teachers were deemed effective or highly effective in the most recent evaluations. In Tennessee, […]

More petulance from Pyongyang this morning, as Kim III’s regime announced that it is restarting the plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon that it shuttered in 2007. The Norks’ neighbors are none too pleased: China Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily news briefing that China has “expressed our regret” over Pyongyang’s declaration. Mr. Hong said […]

It’s not clear how much clever planning goes into decisions that are taken on the fly in the middle of a financial crisis, but as some of the dust settles in Cyprus, the Greek part of the island—bruised, battered, angry at Europe, hating and fearing the Turks—is going to need friends. There’s a short list […]