We’re used to North Africa being a source of grim news: the war-that-isn’t-a-war rolls on, armed protestors in Libya have stalled the country’s oil exports, and Egypt is locked into an economic death spiral after this summer’s coup-that-wasn’t-a-coup. But there is one bright spot: a geological director for the Spanish oil and gas company Repsol sees […]

Young Chinese workers don’t want to work in factories anymore. Terry Gou, founder and Chief executive of Foxconn, China’s largest private employer and one of the manufacturers for the iPhone and iPad, claims that Chinese millennials aspire to more than the low-wage, mundane factory jobs which were held by so many in the previous generation […]

Detroit’s meltdown and ensuing bankruptcy are obviously a great tragedy for the city of Detroit, but for the rest of us there is a silver lining: the Motor City’s plight is a wake-up call to other struggling cities and municipalities across the country.The AP reports that a number of mayors, from NYC’s Michael Bloomberg to […]

India is close to signing a double-barreled mega deal with Russia to help shore up its struggling domestic energy supply. One deal will see Moscow helping New Delhi with nuclear energy technology, and the other will give India a stake in a liquified natural gas (LNG) project in Russia’s Yamal peninsula. The Wall Street Journal reports: The […]

China isn’t too pleased about America’s and Japan’s cozying up to one another in recent weeks.Last week, the US and Japan signed a treaty creating a missile defense system in Japan and boosting the US presence in Japanese bases. On Friday, representatives of both countries (along with Australia) met in Bali, where they brought up the […]

Stockton, California, is well on its way to repeating the mistakes of its sister bankrupt Golden State city, Vallejo: The city manager of Stockton has proposed a deal in bankruptcy court that involves zero pension cuts. Opting instead for slashing workers and health benefits, extending payments and selling buildings, the deal, if approved, would leave […]

Back in February, China’s state-owned oil company CNOOC finalized a deal to purchase the Canadian oil sands firm Nexen. At the time, many in Beijing hailed the move as a triumph for China.China has been relentless in its pursuit of foreign sources of oil as it tries to meet its ever-growing energy demand; when CNOOC […]

While North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-Un attended school in Switzerland as a teenager, he took a shine to skiing. But that, of course, has nothing to do with North Korea’s decision to open a multimillion dollar ski resort in Masik. Perish the thought.No, it must instead be the case that the estimated 0.02 percent […]

Obamacare has had a rough first week: technical glitches in the signup system and traffic overloads have prevented thousands of people from signing in to the system.Then again, maybe it’s a good thing that all those people couldn’t even load the web pages. NBC is now reporting that technical glitches in the software’s data collection has […]

A week after the UN resolution on Syria’s chemical weapons passed a Security Council vote, UN inspectors were in Damascus decommissioning their first batch of warheads, bombs and mixing labs. Sensing a PR opportunity, Assad gave an interview to Germany’s Spiegel, where though repeating his denial of ever having used chemical weapons, he struck what could […]