A notable uptick in violence has been reported in Kashmir this week. On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, Indian sources say Pakistani troops fired guns and mortars on at least 50 Indian border posts. For its part, Pakistan blamed India for escalating the violence. Ten civilians, including two children, were said to have been injured in this latest […]

It’s become a truism that the cost of college rises every year, putting a quality education out of reach for many families. Yet a new College Board report has found that despite the constant tuition increases, the amount that students actually pay for college has remained essentially flat for the last decade as scholarships and […]

Many blues style themselves as enemies of Wall Street, defenders of the little guy against voracious or reckless financiers. The branding seems unpersuasive, though, considering that pension fund managers, key stewards of the blue model, keep looking to high-risk, high fee Wall Street for help: According to a recent report by Cliffwater LLC, an adviser to institutional investors, from […]

With an independence referendum fast approaching, Scotland’s decision whether to stay in the UK may depend on the UK’s relationship with Europe. Although current polling suggests that the measure to dissolve the union will not pass, the FT warns that this could change if Britain continues distancing itself from the EU: Received wisdom has it that […]

While polio has been eradicated almost the world over, it is still stubbornly endemic in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria—three countries where radical Islam is resurgent.As the New York Times reported last year, “Resistance to polio vaccine springs from a combination of fear, often in marginalized ethnic groups, and brutal historical facts that make that fear seem […]

A grand historical drama in the Middle East is moving towards a moment of decision, and the fate of President Obama’s foreign policy and much else besides is hanging by a thread. As two storms shake the foundations of the region’s political order (the Shi’a-Sunni war and the crisis of legitimacy across the region opened […]

Charter students consistently perform much better on math and reading than public school students, according to a new MIT study in Boston. What’s more, this achievement gap grows the longer the students stay in school. Boston Business Journal reports: The researchers found a gain each year in the proficiency of middle school students’ on the MCAS of […]

With the revelation this week that the NSA had allegedly spied on none other than Angela Merkel, President Obama finds himself in hot water once again over his administration’s intelligence gathering practices. Germany’s Foreign Minister summoned the US Ambassador to his offices for a formal chewing out, and a furious Merkel herself reportedly called the […]

The idea of delaying the penalty associated with the ACA’s individual mandate is becoming more and more popular among Democrats every day. WSJ: Sen. Kay Hagan (D., N.C.), who is up for re-election in 2014, said in a Thursday statement that the $95 penalty on individuals who fail to enroll in a health insurance plan should be […]

On Friday, a provincial court in Shandong upheld a life sentence for Bo Xilai, the once-rising star of Chinese politics whose sudden fall marked the biggest  crisis at the top levels of China’s political leadership in decades. Bo is now on his way to jail—that is, a jail reserved for elite political prisoners, north of […]