Total student loan debt in America recently exceeded $1 trillion and is now higher than credit card debt. It’s a mind-boggling figure, and one which has led some economists and commentators to claim it’s simply the latest financial bubble waiting to burst. Others editorialize about what all that debt says about the state of higher […]

[Via Meadia‘s man in Istanbul provides the blog with updates from Turkish and regional newspapers. Notably, this week saw Turkish officials grow closer to the Iraqi Kurdish government, causing Baghdad displeasure.]The Turkish press gave roundly positive coverage to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for his recent comments that “developments in Iraq are not a good […]

Renowned climate change proponent, environmental “guru” and prominent leader of the green movement James Lovelock “has admitted to being ‘alarmist’ about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too”, reports MSNBC.Lovelock was once on the radical fringe of climate scientists, writing dire predictions like “before this century is over billions of us will […]

Red plastic cups on college campuses may evoke images of wild frat parties. But at Virginia Tech they are being put to much better use: to help revolutionize the teaching of mathematics. Gone are professors and chalkboards. In their place is a giant computer lab—known as the Math Emporium—which is open 24 hours a day […]

Over at the estimable (but paywall protected) Financial Times, the admirable Gideon Rachman has a good column on the meaning of the French election for France and for Europe. Every serious investor and every serious student of international relations should take a look, because Gideon makes a persuasive case that whoever wins the French election […]

North Korea may have humiliated itself with its last missile test, but it still leads the world in the production of over-the-top political vituperation. Analysts have been looking for Pyongyang to overcompensate for the missile flop, so a statement issued by the North Korean military lashing out at its southern neighbor does not come as […]

The close relationship between America and Israel is one of the strongest and most famous in the world. Yet, like any relationship, it is not without its sore points, of which perhaps one of the most sensitive is the case of Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy convicted of passing thousands of classified U.S. documents along […]

European immigrants landed in the Big Apple before settling in the heartland, and later Irish, Italians, Chinese and Puerto Ricans founded businesses and communities that have shaped the city into what it is today. Yet in recent years, New York has become less welcoming to its more entrepreneurial immigrants. Today’s New York Times discusses the […]

Via Meadia has long considered fears that America would be overrun by waves of immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America to be overblown. As with previous waves, immigration from Mexico will peak and then begin to fall.Now a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center finds that over the past five years, immigration from […]

The decline of manufacturing jobs due to automation and the growth of outsourcing may paint a dire picture of the future American workforce, but as we’ve noted before, innovation offers the potential for substantial upside as well. The Economist points to some of that promise: Ask a factory today to make you a single hammer […]