First pigs, now ducks. Why can’t China keep dead animals out of its rivers? About 1,000 dead ducks were discovered in a river in southwest China, just two weeks after thousands of dead pigs showed up in a different river.The pigs floated along a river that bisects Shanghai and provides around 22 percent of its […]

The Syrian opposition is an incoherent mess. News today from Ha’aretz is that the Free Syrian Army has rejected the political leadership’s choice of Ghassan Hitto as provisional Prime Minister. Details: The Free Syrian Army leaders, fighting against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, do not believe that Hitto, a U.S. citizen who spent most of his life in […]

You might hate your commute, but it probably gives your children the biggest cause for complaint: A recent meta-study identified traffic pollution as a potential contributor to 14 percent of childhood asthma cases, “putting it on par with second hand smoke.” Discovery News reports: The researchers reached their conclusions by applying data from existing epidemiological research, […]

File this under “news to make law students cry:” a program called App Academy promises to teach its students programming in just nine weeks. Even better, it won’t charge you tuition until you’ve secured a job. Wired reports: App Academy in San Francisco (and now New York) offers a 9-week, 90-hours-a-week boot camp to turn programming novices into […]

In light of Obama’s Israel trip this week, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at the roots of the U.S.-Israel relationship and why Americans consistently support Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. Despite the beliefs of much of the world, it has little to do with the so-called […]

Replying to yesterday’s query, a Via Meadia reader, who grew up in Saudi Arabia in the 50s and 60s and worked there in the 1970s, wrote in with some thoughts as to why Internet censorship is different there than in China or Iran: Saudi Arabia is not a theocracy in the sense that Iran is nor a totalitarian […]

The world’s summer monsoon rainfall is up sharply this year. Surely, climate change must be to blame?Well, no. Climate models have predicted that for every degree of global warming, summer monsoon rainfall would increase 2.6 percent, yet rainfall is increasing nearly four times that projected amount. Natural swings in ocean temperature, not climate change, are […]

Californians learned earlier this month that their insurance premiums would be shooting up as a result of Obamacare. But those of us outside California shouldn’t gloat, as it looks like California was just early to the party: Insurance companies are now notifying brokers around the country that premiums are likely to go up in the coming […]

Detroit’s new emergency manager is set to take over the city tomorrow, and Detroiters are bracing themselves for regime change. Thus far, nobody knows quite what to expect, and an air of apprehension has set in as a number of groups prepare to oppose him, including everyone from unions concerned about their contracts to elected […]

Got a bad heart? Just have a scientist build you a new one. According to a story in the WSJ, scientists are making major breakthroughs in artificially growing replacement organs out of human cells. In 2011, for example, a London based researcher made a replacement windpipe for a cancer patient, and was able to save the patient’s life […]