This week’s essay looked at the momentous and perilous drama unfolding in the Middle East today, and the President’s strategy in the region: As the prospect of serious negotiations between the Americans and Iranians comes closer, both Israel and Saudi Arabia become nervous. Their interests are not identical with those of the United States, and […]

The most powerful Japanese prime minister in decades is pursuing an integrated national strategy to revive Japanese power and dynamism. In a big interview with the Wall Street Journal, Shinzo Abe “said he envisions a resurgent Japan taking a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter China’s power, seeking to place Tokyo at the helm […]

The White House is crafting a new, more modest second term strategy for the Middle East. That’s according to a New York Times story, based on authorized leaks, which outlines a core strategy involving limited US engagement focused around three goals: reaching a nuclear deal with Iran, making peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and mitigating the conflict […]

HONG KONG – OCTOBER 25: A tourist takes a photograph during a cloudy day in front of a billboard featuring photos of the city skyline with a clear sky on October 25, 2013 in Hong Kong. A government warning has been issued after Hong Kong’s environmental protection department reported today that Air Pollution Index results […]

There are very few systems that can’t be made more efficient by being rigged with more sensors, it seems. The latest aspect of modern life to get smart: parking. The Rocky Mountain Institute draws attention to upgrades on the horizon for this problem familiar to car-owning city-dwellers and urban planners alike: Searching for a parking space is […]

What do Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Eliot Spitzer and Antonin Scalia have in common? All were editors of the Harvard Law Review, the most prestigious law journal in the country and, clearly, the launchpad for a number of high-profile political careers. Yet despite the high profile of many of these journals, nobody involved in the […]

Recent developments in Chile remind us how really violent the Communists really were. The BBC reports that the families of Chilean soldiers killed in a botched attempt to assassinate Gen. Augusto Pinochet are taking legal action against the head of the Communist party: In an interview with the Chilean newspaper La Tercera in April, Mr Teillier said […]

We’re rapidly approaching the point where we’ll no longer be able to treat many of our most deadly infections. PBS has a detailed, fascinating, and alarming interview with Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, an associate director at the CDC, about rising resistance to antibiotics among Western populations. Dr. Srinivasan points out that antibiotics have been a key part of treating […]

Besides the main battle in Syria—the rebels against Assad—there is also a nasty little war emerging among the rebels themselves, with the Kurds and moderates squaring off against the radical Islamists. Reuters reports: Kurdish militants seized a Syrian border post on the frontier with Iraq early on Saturday, fighters and monitors said, after three days of clashes […]

If Sarah Palin had leveled her accusations of death panels at Canada and not America, she apparently would have been right. That’s the thesis of new piece in Slate by Adam Goldenberg. It outlines how Ontario has a tribunal that is legally empowered to overrule family members trying to keep their relatives on life support alive. Goldenberg argues that […]