Many wondered how the Iraqi government would survive after the last U.S. troops left the country. Thus far, the signs are mixed: Parliamentary institutions are working, sort of, but a lot of the political wrangling is taking place on the streets in the form of violence among militias rather than arguments among political factions.On the […]

China’s latest salvo in its conflict with Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea has struck a nerve. Japan, which has still not officially acknowledged that a territorial dispute even exists, summoned China’s ambassador before the Japanese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday after Chinese ships sashayed into Japanese-controlled waters for 13 hours. The New […]

The last time a 3-D, digital, touch-controlled globe was being used, Admiral Akbar was briefing the Rebel Alliance on the impending Battle of Endor. Those of us on Earth, however, were still using flat paper maps or hollow plastic orbs.How times have changed. The NY Times reports that widespread use of digital globes is on the […]

Banks just can’t catch a break. Just days after they’ve agreed to pay out huge settlements for their pre-recession abuses, they’ve become the most recent victim of Iranian cyber attacks: The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to […]

South Africans are striking again, although this time it’s farmers, not miners, who are on strike in one of the country’s top wine regions. The New York Times reports: South African police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at hundreds of striking farm workers who blocked a highway in the grape-growing Western Cape on Wednesday, the […]

America is about to reach a new energy milestone: According to recent government forecasts, oil imports will will drop to the lowest level in more than 25 years in 2014. The FT reports that imports will fall to six million barrels per day, half of the 12 million barrels per day we imported from 2004–07, putting America […]

If Governor Pat Quinn is to be believed, this week was a deciding moment for the state of Illinois, whose pension woes have become so bad that even the state’s staunch Democratic leadership agrees that pension reform is a top priority. But by Wednesday morning, nothing had been achieved, and senators began to pack their bags and […]

The Devil is indeed in the details. Writing in Slate, Matthew Yglesias argues that significant policy decisions can hinge on which statistics legislators choose to heed. Unfortunately, they often choose bad ones, particularly when it comes to the economy: Even the smartest theoretical or policy work is basically valueless if it’s based on flawed or misleading […]

Dai Zigeng, the publisher of the Beijing News, resigned last night after state censors forced the paper to publish an editorial in today’s edition that is critical of Southern Weekend, a Guangdong newspaper where protests over censorship erupted last week.Beijing News and Southern Weekend (yesterday we called it Southern Weekly, an alternative translation) are owned by […]

Jiang Mianheng, the son of a former Chinese leader, has just dumped $350 million into an ongoing project by China’s National Academy of Sciences to develop a new kind of nuclear reactor with a new type of fuel. The project has been underway for almost two years now, but this new cash infusion is sure […]