The number 7 pointed to both good and bad news for Obamacare this week. On the hand, Reuters reported that only 7 percent of Americans think the rollout of the exchanges has gone well. That number isn’t surprising given the enormous technical failures of the federal exchanges, but it does show that the shutdown and debt […]

India’s latest attempts to remain the preeminent force in South Asia have been put in jeopardy by its own politicians. The Madras High Court has filed a public interest litigation to cancel the central government’s proposal to sell two warships to Sri Lanka. J Jayalalithaa, Chief Minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu wrote a […]

Researchers believe they have reached a key “turning point” in the search for a treatment for Alzheimer’s. The BBC reports that the Medical Research Council at the University of Leicester found a chemical compound that was able to halt a kind of neurodegeneration in mice that is similar to the brain cell death of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s […]

Developing countries may be transitioning to service economies too quickly, says Dani Rodrik in an excellent new piece for Project Syndicate. Most western economies got where they are by industrializing and then shifting to a service economy over the course of two centuries. Many developing countries today, by contrast, are skipping straight to services. Even purported […]

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro doesn’t understand inflation, apparently. Whenever the leader is asked why his country’s inflation rate is soaring at over 49 percent, he delegates a government official to give the typical response: because of speculators, saboteurs, and America, that’s why!Like many leftist regimes before it, Venezuela spends heavily on social welfare, stifles private […]

Ji Yingnan almost had it all. Money, luxury clothes, a nice car, a rich and powerful boyfriend. But when she found out he had a wife and teenage son, she felt betrayed. In revenge she took to the internet with stories of her boyfriend’s corruption and extravagance.Like other mistresses of powerful officials in China, Ji […]

After years of recession-generated lower municipal tax bases, wounded local economies, and decimated city finances, the vast majority of cities now report that they are better equipped to meet their fiscal needs than they were a year ago, according to a new report by the National League of Cities. Tax revenues are up and city […]

Which cities and states have made buying a home easiest for the middle class? Regular Via Meadia readers won’t be surprised to learn that California, New York and Illinois don’t make the cut. Ohio, a WSJ listicle shows, is the middle class home-owning capital of America: Some 86% of homes in the Akron, Ohio area […]

A bankruptcy trustee for a now-defunct American solar panel producer is suing three Chinese firms for nearly $1 billion, accusing them of illegally dumping their products on the US market and driving the company out of business. The WSJ reports: The foreign manufacturers “conspired to export more than 95% of their production, dump their products in the […]

Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s seasoned Foreign Minister, is angry. When he refused to give a scheduled speech at the United Nations general assembly last week, Reuters reports, it was an “uncharacteristically forthright” message to the United States. American foreign policy is angering the Saudis in dangerous ways.“Engaged in what they see as a life-and-death […]