Late last month, violence exploded in western Burma for the second time this year. The government reported over 80 people killed 4,600 houses burned, and more than 22,000 people displaced, numbers that are almost certainly underestimated. This outburst is patterned on a similar orgy of violence in June, when scores of Rohingya Muslims were killed […]

The long fight between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s education commissioner and the Newark teacher’s union is finally drawing to a close. After a months-long struggle, the two parties have come to an agreement on merit pay. On Monday union members will vote to approve (or reject) a contract where teachers’ bonuses would be rewarded […]

With Greece slowly circling the drain, the Greeks and the European officials charged with rescuing it badly need some good news. Instead, they get this: Quartz reports that the recent case in which an American hedge fund successfully sued Argentina for the full value of its bonds may set a precedent for similar actions by Greek creditors: […]

If you aren’t yet paranoid about someone spying on you using the webcam built in to your laptop or desktop monitor or smartphone, perhaps you should be. There’s a must-read story in Ars Technica about the latest skirmish in the long-running cyber war between Russia and Georgia. The piece is worth reading just for the geopolitical […]

French President Hollande is having a rough first year. He entered office during a grave crisis, and now he is under siege from all sides: his own party is chastising him for abiding by European deficit rules; the opposition has attacked him for raising taxes during a downturn; big business resents his support for government-mandated […]

More than a thousand protestors gathered in Ningbo, China, to protest the construction of a chemical plant that they feared would pollute the environment last weekend. Police dispersed the protestors, and then the authorities announced they were giving in to public anger and abandoning the project.At first glance, it looks like the public furor succeeded […]

The battle lines are drawn in Nigeria: the government’s security services just executed “dozens” of youths in a northern town known as Boko Haram’s stronghold. The BBC reports: Dozens of young men have been shot dead in Nigeria by the military in Maiduguri, residents in the north-eastern city have told the BBC. . .Malam Aji […]

For years, one of the main conceits of the American left has been that that it is a stalwart defender of tolerance against a bigoted and intolerant right wing. But the constant attacks on Mormonism in liberal papers, to name only one such prejudice, have made it abundantly clear that left-wing bigotry and intolerance are far more […]

New York has rarely needed strong leadership more than it does now; unfortunately, our Mayor keeps shrinking.What would the world have thought of Mayor Nagin if he’d diverted resources from Katrina relief efforts to holding a Mardi Gras parade? Mayor Bloomberg may be about to find out. As the NYT reports, the Mayor has vowed to go […]

The jobs report is out; 171,000 jobs were created in October and the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent, and the last two job totals were revised upward. The two political camps will do what they do best and spin like a windmill; if we could hook campaign surrogates to generators we’d have alternative energy […]