In disputes over the South China Sea, it’s usually China vs. everyone else, with Chinese maps and bullying behavior clashing up against the territorial claims of many of its neighbors. But at the ASEAN summit last week, something different happened: Cambodia took China’s side. Reuters has the story: Cambodia batted away repeated attempts to raise the issue […]

In the past few years, higher education has moved online with breathtaking speed. Harvard and MIT’s EdX have led the way, but Stanford’s Coursera is quickly emerging as a rival. It announced today that it has added 12 more universities to its list of participating institutions, among them Johns Hopkins, Duke, UC-San Francisco and the […]

Washington Post: “Neighborhoods across Damascus were rocked Monday with the most intense fighting the capital has seen in the 16-month-old Syrian uprising…”The Economist notes that Damascus residents are getting nervous. Some are blatantly, some nervously, some halfheartedly showing their support for Butcher Assad, afraid of what might come next. Others are working behind the scenes […]

The increasingly bizarre parallel universe known as the United Nations continues to astound. The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran was recently elected to the 15-member general committee of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty conference currently underway in New York. The conference is supposed to develop a treaty regulating the international sale of conventional arms.What could […]

Amid ominous rumblings in the Pacific over very small bits of land, there appears to be some encouraging news about two very big Asian nations. China and India have struck a new agreement enabling their state-owned oil companies to jointly bid and invest in infrastructure. The first project is a pipeline through Burma into southwest […]

The rise of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood may not be so terrible for Israel after all.While he hasn’t come out and said it outright, Mohamed Morsi has shown some signs of being open to a change in border policy between Egypt and the Gaza Strip—at least, that’s what Hamas is hoping for. The Times of Israel […]

Over at Newsweek Joel Kotkin paints a gut-wrenching portrait of the plight of the millennials, who still dream the same dreams as their parents but lack the means to realize them. “Generation Screwed” is his term for the young adults facing unemployment, depreciated degrees and massive debt laid upon them by their boomer parents.Read the whole thing. […]

Reacting to the removal of U.S. sanctions on Burma last Wednesday, two experts on Asia policy say we’re rushing rapprochement. In the Washington Post, Michael Green and Daniel Twining write that the administration rushed this decision through the National Security Council to time a new policy with Clinton’s visit to the region this week: By […]

Via Meadia has been commenting on the energy revolution taking place all around us these days (Energy Revolution: Part One, Part Two). Thankfully, we’re not the only ones who’ve noticed.Chrystia Freeland: [T]hanks to new discoveries and new technologies, the end of fossil fuels is not looking quite so imminent. From the oil sands of northern […]

If you read only one thing about Mormonism this election cycle, read Walter Kirn’s moving essay in The New Republic, “Confessions of an Ex-Mormon: A Personal History of America’s Most Misunderstood Religion.” Kirn, author of the novel-turned-film Up in the Air, TNR’s new national correspondent and a former Mormon convert, tells a story one never […]