Over the weekend we blogged about India’s expanding economic ties with Myanmar, where the ruling generals are opening the country up to suitors other than China, its traditional patron. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is currently making the first visit by an Indian head of state in decades, tying up deals to export Burmese natural gas […]

At Via Meadia, we’ve spent years scouring the news for the most shocking stories and there is very little that can surprise us. In the past year alone, we’ve seen giant rats descend on New York, British ethicists endorsing “after-birth abortions” and the rise of caffeinated meat.  But the Washington Post has managed to surprise us: it […]

Detroit has introduced a new initiative to save money: eliminate roughly half of its streetlights, leaving citizens in more sparsely populated areas in the dark. The Detroit News reports that Mayor Dave Bing’s plan will reduce streetlights from 88,000 to 46,000, saving Detroit $10 million a year. According to Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer, “You […]

In the next few weeks, the Supreme Court will hand down its decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare and its individual mandate. Via Meadia and the public have both expressed our dissatisfaction with this boondoggle of a reform and its operating mechanisms, but if the law is struck down, what will replace it?The Economist offers […]

Via Meadia has been consistently following the fracking revolution sweeping the U.S., and we continue to be optimistic about the impact of our natural gas industry on energy security and climate change. Today we add another reason for our optimism. The WSJ has the story: The shale gas revolution, which cut the price of natural gas […]

Fellow AI editor and blogger Adam Garfinkle has long been critical of the Obama Administration’s policies in Libya and Syria, and he recently offered some sage advice for policymakers working on Afghanistan: Look before you leap. His advice does not paint a pretty picture for the future of Afghanistan. [T]he entire enterprise of responsible U.S. and […]

The Telegraph reports on the latest development in the ever expanding world of state-sponsored cyberwarfare: Middle Eastern states were targeted and Iran ordered an emergency review of official computer installations after the discovery of a new virus, known as Flame.Experts said the massive malicious software was 20 times more powerful than other known cyber warfare […]

Feckless UN bureaucrats have tried to ban Dante and give Mt. Rushmore back to the Native Americans. Now comes news that serial human rights violator and war criminal Robert Mugabe has been appointed as an International Envoy for Tourism. The Guardian reports this development with wry understatement: Improbable as it seems, the man widely accused of […]

Chinese citizens have been using microblogging sites to get around government censorship, and the Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng affairs have increased the frequency of covert, critical conversation. Users evade the authorities by discussing politics in code, playing with homonyms and puns. Wen Jiabao, for instance, has been dubbed ‘Teletubby”; ‘Tomato” is often associated with […]

For the past month, contagion from Greece’s slow motion meltdown has been spreading west. Spain is now on the verge of collapse, and Italy and Portugal may not be far behind. Now the crisis may be spreading north as well. Despite recent signs of recovery in Ireland, concerns about a Greek euro exit and a […]