Terrorists have dug themselves firmly in to northern Mali, according to an Associated Press reporter who made it into and out of remote Mopti with tales of Islamist fighters preparing to stay forever: Deep inside caves, in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali, Islamic fighters are burrowing into the […]

As Egypt’s Islamists surge and its currency sinks, a Jon Stewart-like TV comedian is mixing it up with many of the country’s religious sheiks: As a new Constitution engraves Islam ever more firmly into Egyptian law, a young comic’s escalating battle with a group of ultraconservative television sheiks has become an early skirmish over the […]

Egyptians have lived through two years of instability and revolution. Recently, they’ve faced a new menace: a crash in the Egyptian pound. Not only is the local money losing value; when crowds of panicky Egyptians stormed to the banks and money changers looking to switch pounds for dollars and euros, supplies of foreign currency ran […]

To see where the discussion on higher ed reform is going, look this piece from editorial writer Charles Lane in the Washington Post. At the University of Minnesota, the number of employees with “human resources” or “personnel” in their job titles has grown from 180 to 272 since the 2004-05 academic year. Since 2006, the […]

The Obama administration issued long expected guidelines about the implementation of the health care law yesterday, and if this NY Times report has it right, a huge loophole in the new law could leave millions of Americans still uninsured.The issue?As the IRS apparently interprets the law, employers with more than 50 workers are required to […]

At this time of year thought naturally turns to New Year’s resolutions, and there’s one that the team at Via Meadia is thinking hard about making.Resolve to do something this year that will help poor people in rural areas of Africa, promote healthy African development, and help preserve endangered wildlife. And have a thrilling good […]

Income taxes are going up by a third in Portugal on January 1. The FT reports: “A fiscal earthquake”, “armed robbery”, “tax napalm”. Descriptions of the income tax increases facing Portuguese families from January 1 make the fiscal cliff looming in the US sound tame by comparison.Lisbon plans to lift income tax revenue by more […]

For the BRICs, 2012 is ending on a sober note. Taken as a group, stocks in the once red hot markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China are trailing global equity averages. Currently, India is running scared and moving towards a new round of reform as growth slows. Brazil on the other hand has been […]

By all appearances, 2012 was a very good year for OPEC. The cartel’s net oil revenue rose to one trillion dollars this year, with average Brent oil barrel prices the highest they’ve ever been. In real terms, OPEC made more money this year than ever before, exceeding  even the record highs reached during the oil crises […]

Depending on who you ask, al-Azhar University in Cairo is the oldest or second oldest educational institution still operating today. It has a unique status throughout the Sunni world as the most reputable and respected school of Islamic jurisprudence and the opinions of its leading scholars are closely read. Al-Azhar is also a bastion of […]