It’s no longer enough for Hungary’s conservative government to associate with anti-Semites and minority-hating bigots. Now it’s in the business of bestowing awards on them. Deutsche Welle reports that the government has given its highest honor to a handful of people well-known for their racism and anti-Semitism: In the past, the journalist, Ferenc Szaniszlo, is […]

Are we witnessing some sort of policy convergence coming out of Beijing? First, Reuters is reporting that some more dovish generals are gaining prominence under new President Xi Jinping: General Liu Yuan, a senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer close to the new leader, warned of the danger of war with Japan in a series of conciliatory commentaries and public […]

Heavy snow is burying British businesses. New research has found that about three in five companies disrupted by winter weather suffered financially as a result, with the average cost soaring above £52,000. The FT reports: It showed that extreme weather was increasingly hampering organisations: a decade ago, it interfered with just 15 per cent of businesses over […]

According to a recent study by the Urban Institute, the young Americans of generations X and Y have accumulated less wealth than their parents did when they were in their twenties and thirties, and they’ll continue to lag behind the baby boomers as they get older.But the Atlantic’s Jordan Weissman disputes this report, and the NYT‘s take on it, […]

Guess who’s not happy with the fact that the EU has imposed a hefty tax on wealthy depositors in Cyprus?The FT is on it : Mr Putin, at a meeting with economic advisers on Monday, was among several Russian leaders to criticise the bailout, which came without consultation with Moscow and could cost Russian depositors up […]

What happens when the all-powerful Israel lobby teams up with former US government officials and Israeli politicians to get its way?Sometimes, very little. Despite nearly three decades of lobbying for his release, Jonathan Pollard, a spy who received a life sentence for giving classified US documents to Israel, is still in jail.As Pollard’s health deteriorates and […]

Congress seems intent on exploring how low its approval rating can go. (Americans now prefer Genghis Khan to our federal legislature.) But the story is completely different for U.S. state legislatures, where new reforms and innovations are helping to keep Americans’ faith in government alive. This weekend’s Economist echoed Via Meadia in a piece lauding states for picking […]

Ahead of the presidential trip to Israel, Tom’s Dispatch has lined up a list of technological marvels to be be demoed for President Obama, all of which have been developed either in Israeli universities or start-ups (h/t @DavidFrum). The ReWalk exoskeleton featured in the video above, which allows paraplegics to walk again, is particularly awe-inspiring.This is one […]

Reuters reported yesterday that President Obama is looking to establish guidelines for international drone use. The President is feeling pressure both at home, because of unease with the ill-defined limits of drone deployment, and abroad, because America is rapidly losing its edge in drone technology: “People say what’s going to happen when the Chinese and […]

We’re fans of good longform writing here at Via Meadia. We’re also always on the lookout for experiments in how to sustainably fund online journalism. As such we’ve been keeping our eye on an interesting little startup called Matter. Their idea is simple: they publish magazine-length reported pieces and charge readers $0.99 per article. They […]