An interesting piece in Foreign Policy by Sadanand Dhume sounds an alarm: the kind of non-alignment that is hard to distinguish from anti-Americanism, a mainstay of Indian foreign policy during the Cold War, is still alive and kicking in parts of the Delhi establishment. India, notes Dhume, sided with Russia and China over most issues […]

This morning there was a car bomb in Aleppo. Yesterday saw two explosions in Damascus with heavy casualties. Syria is descending into the kind of communal madness that produces bloodbaths and anarchy; it is looking more like Iraq and civil war era Lebanon every day.The violence seems to be coming both more sectarian and more […]

In an industry where safety is an absolute necessity, any defect can be devastating to an aircraft maker. The European company Airbus is learning that the hard way: small cracks on wing brackets of the A380 have angered operators, who have demanded compensation for the time their fleets have been grounded for repairs.As the FT […]

How the tide has turned in Japan. Once a powerhouse that sent manufacturing jobs and massive investment abroad, Japan can no longer grow without outside help. The NYT reports that Japanese mayors are now traveling to China to implore manufacturers to come build factories on their jobs-deprived shores.Trapped in slow growth since the early 1990s and […]

While the Russian opposition’s hopes fade for immediate reforms, Vladimir Putin is quickly consolidating his power base after sealing the election victory. Putin reserves the right to choose regional government officials, keeping the ones he likes and throwing out any pesky reformers–even after they’re elected. He has not allowed smaller parties to  join together to […]

After 10 years in operation, the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered its first verdict this week, convicting the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga of recruiting child soldiers in the long and brutal conflict that has festered at the center of Africa. One of 15 defendants before the ICC, its ruling in the Lubanga case brings to […]

Sometimes, alarming facts can be concealed behind seemingly innocuous jargon. That is the case with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s latest polling on the “migratory patterns” of religious groups. As it turns out, one particular group is consistently on the move: Of the seven groups examined in this report, Jews have by […]

The news about pink slime (a not particularly appetizing beef mélange) in school lunches reminds me of the elementary school song about school food that is known to every red-blooded American child:Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts Little dirty birdies’ feet Mutilated monkey meat Pale pink piles of petrified pelican poo That’s what […]

Brazil feels the jaws of a familiar trap closing on its leg — and it is determined to struggle. As its finance minister told the Financial Times in a recent interview (paywall alert): “We don’t want to lose our manufacturing sector. Brazil is not merely an exporter of commodities… We are not going to just […]

The Viennese still clap and stomp during the chorus of the Radetzkymarsch, the ebullient martial tune by Johann Strauss, from which the underappreciated author Joseph Roth took the title of his most-celebrated book. (Go here to watch Herbert von Karajan hamming it up as he conducts the March at the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s concert.) […]