On Friday, we remarked on the outrageous story that online education startup Coursera was being banned in Minnesota on the grounds that it hadn’t registered with the state government. We weren’t the only ones beating that drum. In response to the massive Internet backlash, Minnesota has clarified that the law does not apply to free online ed like […]

A set of new anti-Semitic Turkish textbooks is raising the alarm that some among the ruling Islamists are taking the country in a dangerous new direction. The Financial Times has the story: A book on Albert Einstein describes the physicist as “filthy and slovenly”. Immediately after saying that he ate soap, it adds: “The sad part […]

In the old days, gunboats used to arrive at debtor countries from creditor countries seeking repayment. These days, the creditors are seizing the gunboats from debtors. The New York Times reports: The Libertad, a three-mast tall ship with 330 navy cadets and crew aboard, was seized at Tema, an industrial port east of Ghana’s capital, Accra, […]

The donors to Syria’s rebels are divided. The result is chaos on the ground, which looks to extend well into the period after Assad eventually falls: Despite a recent push to unify the disparate armed opposition groups under a single command, rebels are struggling to form stable alliances even at a local level, a problem […]

With Monday’s debate on foreign policy just around the corner, Foreign Policy’s Rosa Brooks takes a look at Obama’s record and doesn’t much like what she sees. Particularly in the Middle East, many of Obama’s most ballyhooed policies have failed to get off the ground at all: Despite some successes large and small, Obama’s foreign policy has […]

The flirtation between Russia and Israel we noted in June just got deeper this week when Russia helped postpone UNESCO voting on several resolutions against Israel.Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, and a few others had separately pushed for UNESCO to condemn some of Israel’s recent actions, including archaeologic digs in UNESCO-protected Old Jerusalem and the neglect education […]

From the AP: China flexed some maritime muscle Friday in its dispute with Japan over a chain of uninhabited islands, holding naval exercises in the East China Sea to demonstrate its ability to enforce offshore territorial claims. . . .Friday’s exercise involved 11 vessels from the East China Sea fleet and the civilian marine surveillance […]

Starbucks may be scaling back its empire in the United States, but overseas it’s expanding into a new market: India. On Friday the company opened a store in Mumbai, its first in the country. The store is a joint venture with Indian conglomerate Tata and will soon be joined by more, according to the Associated Press: The company […]

It’s really happening now: the war in Syria is spilling over into Lebanon. A massive car bomb exploded in the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafieh in Beirut, killing Lebanese senior intelligence official Wissam Al-Hassan and seven others and wounding about 80. The New York Times: The security official, Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, was apparently the intended […]

It’s now been nearly a year since the NATO’s Libya mission was completed, but the afterparty is still dragging on in nearby countries. This week, the FT reported that France is growing particularly concerned with the growth of al-Qaeda groups in northern Mali, where Islamic militants have established a firm foothold in the region: For years, al-Qaeda […]