For the first time in decades the Japanese government has approved a military aid package to a foreign country. Japanese warships have also participated in cooperative exercises with neighboring countries, many of whom have painful memories of encounters with Japanese armed forces. The NYT has the rest of the story: And after stepping up civilian […]

Zero Hedge got us thinking about the geopolitical implications of the agricultural supply chain and how everything is changing, rapidly. Consider: Structurally, China is at a huge disadvantage as it accounts for 20% of the world’s population, but only 7% of arable land. Compare that with Brazil which has the reverse of those ratios. What […]

President Obama’s strategy of maintaining a “light footprint” in the Middle East while stepping up U.S. involvement in Asia isn’t going exactly as planned. In light of the chaos and uncertainty in Libya, Syria, Gaza, and Egypt—to say nothing of the continued threat from Iran—the military is now considering increasing its presence in the region, according […]

As the undeclared cyberwar heats up, Middle Eastern countries are turning toward the United States for training and equipment to defend their vital infrastructure against digital attacks. The Washington Post reports: Qatar, Saudi Arabia and countries such as Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates now are clamoring for cyber-tools and expertise. Like Qatar in 2010, […]

Syrian rebels have captured several important objectives over a few days of intense fighting. Liz Sly reports for the Washington Post: In the past week, the rebels have seized five important military facilities in the north, the east and near the capital, Damascus, capturing sizable quantities of weaponry, further isolating remaining government positions and freeing […]

In Longmont, Colorado, voters approved a measure to ban fracking, placing their town at the forefront of heated legal and political battles over the practice.In an interesting parallel to the recent marijuana legalization measures, the ban has set the stage for a confrontation between state and local government over who exactly has the authority to regulate energy companies. The […]

The words “start-up culture” generally conjure images of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Area. But a thousand miles to the south, in Mexico, there is a nascent start-up culture too. Ambitious young Mexicans concerned about the state of their country are turning to business rather than politics as a way to change their society. […]

While American teenagers and “tweens” swoon over Justin Bieber and One Direction, in Hong Kong a different sort of teen idol is on the rise: superstar tutors. In Hong Kong’s rigorous examination system, grades are extremely important and tutoring commonplace: more than 70 percent of students are believed to take part in some form of tutoring […]

It’s pretty clear that federal housing policy not only helped inflate the housing bubble, but wrecked the prospects of exactly the low income, marginal, first time home buyers well intentioned people were trying to help. The same thing seems to be happening in the world of higher ed: low income students who are struggling in […]

Could this time be different?Speculation, especially in the English language press, about the break up of the Franco-German alliance at the heart of the European Union crops up every time Europe comes under stress. (Economist and FT readers take note: British papers in particular love to speculate on this outcome, as a Franco-German breakup is […]