On November 21, five days before the fourth anniversary of the 2008 Mumbai terror strike that killed 126 people, India executed the only attacker captured alive by the police. Ajmal Kasab, found guilty of murder and waging war against India and scores of other offenses, was hung with little fanfare in the early hours of […]

Brazil’s latest GDP data further tarnishes its reputation as the great hope of Latin America. The country’s economy grew by a mere 0.6 percent last quarter—far less than what’s needed to achieve the 4 percent annual growth rate its overly optimistic finance minister had predicted.This is in sharp contrast with earlier years. In 2010, Brazil grew by […]

India’s economy continues to falter. In the quarter from July to September, its growth rate shrunk from 5.5 to 5.3 percent, a three-year low. With only one month left, India looks like it will post one of its worst years in recent memory. The BBC News reports: Weaker global demand for exports, a dip in foreign […]

According to a Gallup poll, American small-business owners became extremely pessimistic about their future prospects following the presidential election. After hitting a nadir in mid-2010, optimism had been growing steadily over the past two years. But in the last month, that positive trend has reversed.A deeper look at the Gallup data reveals even more bad […]

California school districts, hit hard by declining tax revenues, are turning to Wall Street for “capital-appreciation bonds.” It’s a quick fix with a heavy cost: In return for delaying payments for decades, the districts will have to pay back much, much more than they borrowed—often 10 times as much. Needless to say, these cities will […]

The Washington Post: Chen Kegui, the nephew of blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, was sentenced Friday to 39 months in prison for injuring government agents who stormed into his home while searching for his uncle, who had fled house arrest.Another activist and friend, Hu Jia, said on his Twitter account that Chen Kegui was found guilty […]

Plainclothes police in Cuba harassed an internationally respected human rights leader and his colleague in separate incidents on Tuesday. Sounds like Cuba’s government is carrying out yet another crackdown on its dissident community. The Associated Press reports: Elizardo Sanchez said two plainclothes officials stopped him near his Havana home on Tuesday, shouting physical threats and using crude language. […]

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Governor Chris Christie is calling for the construction of a dune system to protect costal communities from future storms.Despite protests from shoreline NIMBYs who complain that the new dunes will block their view, Christie has vowed to push ahead with the project, teaming up with New York Governor Andrew […]

The internet is still down in Syria, and fighting is raging in multiple locations across the country in what people fear could be the beginning of a more brutal and destructive phase of the civil war. “In some ways, it’s a Cyclops stabbing itself in the eye,” Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University […]

Pew has some ugly U.S. demographics numbers in a new report out yesterday: The overall U.S. birth rate, which is the annual number of births per 1,000 women in the prime childbearing ages of 15 to 44, declined 8% from 2007 to 2010. The birth rate for U.S.-born women decreased 6% during these years, but […]