The Obama administration is alienating the Saudis with its Syria and Iran policies, perhaps to unprecedented levels.The Saudis are good at what they do and are not sentimentalists. In Egypt, Saudi support for the generals led to an embarrassing flop of the Obama administration’s pro-Morsi policies. In Syria and Iran, the Obama administration again finds […]

China knows it has a pollution problem. Its rivers are drying up; much of what remains is heavily polluted and occasionally plays host to dead animal flotillas. Its megacities huddle under clouds of deadly smog.What Beijing is less clear on is what to do about it. It is throwing money at the problem, but that […]

If you’ve ever followed the news about big construction projects (like a high-speed rail line, to pick a random example), you know that cost overruns and delays are par for the course. We can almost guarantee you’ve never seen overruns like these: an oil project in the north Caspian Sea produced its first barrel of oil […]

Resource-rich African countries are pushing back to a greater extent than ever before against the Chinese companies and workers extracting those resources. From Gabon to Chad to Niger, China is heavily engaged in mining African minerals and raw materials. Sketchy African regimes appreciate China’s hands-off approach and lack of concern about local politics. But just […]

The Republican base may be single-mindedly focused on repealing Obamacare, but it looks like the party leadership is finally be coming around to the “replace” part of their agenda. WaPo reports that the Republican Study Committee has produced a concrete proposal for an ACA alternative and will push for a House vote on the measure. More: Under the […]

French President François Hollande’s wildly unpopular tax policies have a new critic: François Hollande. After a year in which everyone from the rich to entrepreneurs to the general public have savaged his tax plans, Hollande has admitted that French taxes are simply too high. As the FT reports, Hollande is cutting back on a few planned tax hikes that would […]

News of self-driving cars never fails to pique our interest at Via Meadia. While Google is hard at work developing the technology that would make us happy perpetual passengers, others are spoiling the party. Writing for Bloomberg View, Megan McArdle identifies liability as a major logistical challenge: [E]ven if the overall number of accidents drops [as a […]

Online courses have seen their stock rise dramatically over the past couple of years, but one question still lingers—and it’s a big one: can they make any money? Thus far, the answer has been no. Young MOOC upstarts like Coursera and Udacity have been quick to point out that they are at present more focused on establishing […]

In a better world, two news stories today would help straighten out the often crooked reporting on the Middle East: Israel has decided to lift a major ban on imports of building materials to the Gaza Strip; meanwhile Egypt is destroying the vast majority of Gaza’s smuggling tunnels (on which its economy depends) and is […]

In 2006, President Obama gave a speech condemning the culture of lobbying in DC, holding up as an example a closed-door deal the then-reigning GOP made with a clutch of health care lobbyists. Seven years later, the front page of the NYT has a big story about “dozens” of former administration officials moving into lobbying […]