Reuters has some truly shocking news from Greece. Via Meadia, too, is shocked, shocked to learn that Athens will fail to meet its debt targets for the umpteenth time in a row. A new IMF report released Thursday suggests that, even under the most optimistic scenario, Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio will be well above the target level of […]

Politicians are less likely to kiss babies than to threaten to shoot them these days. Jerry Brown, who is facing increasing opposition to his plan to raise taxes, has a message to voters: without a huge tax increase on the rich, schools will be closed for weeks.Brown cited a higher authority to defend his stance: […]

Reports from North Korea are always hard to come by, but The Telegraph has some juicy details about newly-installed Kim Jong Un’s mysterious army purge. According to reports, Kim recently executed the vice minister of the army in a most unconventional fashion: Ordering him to stand still and hitting him with a mortar round. His crime? Having […]

There will be a weekend-long ceasefire in Syria, Reuters reports: “On the occasion of the blessed Eid al-Adha, the general command of the army and armed forces announces a halt to military operations on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, from Friday morning . . . until Monday,” an army statement read on state […]

Dysfunctional politics and a dysfunctional economy make for a toxic combination, as Japan is finding out. The government has been a house divided since 2010, when the LDP won back the Upper House but failed to take the Lower House. Now Japan faces its own yearly debt-ceiling gridlock, as the government needs to borrow almost […]

Pundits transfixed by fluctuating poll numbers are starting to wonder: What if nobody wins?In what’s looking to be an extremely tight election, a few votes in a few precincts may make the difference between a second Obama term or a Romney presidency. If neither side wins decisively, we could see a slew of recounts and […]

It’s now been nearly one year to the day since the official end of the Libyan civil war. What a difference that year has made for nearby Mali, where Islamic militants now control a significant amount of territory in the northern part of the country, partially due to weapons and training acquired during the Libya […]

Laotian officials announced Thursday that China and Laos have agreed on a railway project that would cross the Laotian highlands to the Chinese border. The WSJ reports: Laos’s Energy and Mining Minister Soulivong Dalavong said in an interview that under the new agreement, which is expected to be signed within days, Chinese banks will provide […]

Russia’s highest ranking military leader accused Syrian rebels of using U.S.-made, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, as the BBC reports: “We have reliable information that Syrian militants have foreign portable anti-aircraft missile systems, including those made in the USA… it should be cleared up who delivered them,” Gen Makarov told journalists in Russia.There have been earlier unconfirmed […]

Japanese and Chinese officials are holding meetings together, trying to turn down the noise around disputed islands in the East China Sea, the WSJ reports: The meeting between the No. 2 foreign ministry officials took place in Shanghai over the weekend, the official said. That followed a meeting between two diplomats one rung down on […]