Oswaldo Paya was the founder of the Varela Project, a campaign to force the Cuban parliament to consider new human rights laws. He was one of Cuba’s most prominent political dissidents and the winner of the EU’s Sakharov Prize, an important human rights award. On Sunday, his car swerved off the road and hit a tree, killing Paya […]

In Iran’s northeast city of Neishabour, thousands have taken to the streets to protest the price of chicken as a result of Western sanctions on the Islamic regime’s nuclear program. In the face of soaring prices of eggs, meat and fish, most Iranians have resorted to chicken as a cheap and accessible source of protein. But […]

At this point, the troubled Eurozone has endured two years of policy fixes from Brussels. The net result? Sick countries are even sicker, and the formerly healthy countries are starting to sneeze and sniffle. On the weight of the threat of Greece’s exit from the euro and the cost of seemingly endless bailouts, Moody’s has lowered […]

AFP reports that the European Union declines to consider Hezbollah as a terrorist organization: The European Union turned down a request on Tuesday by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to blacklist Hezbollah as a terror group after last week’s deadly bombing in Bulgaria. “There is no consensus for putting Hezbollah on the list of terrorist […]

After an all-too-brief post-election honeymoon, economic reality is beginning to crash down on France’s new Socialist president, François Hollande. French auto companies are closing factories, and the Hollande government is mostly powerless to do anything about it. As the BBC reports: President Hollande’s campaign slogan was “change is now” but, since he has been in […]

Round two of WRM’s interview on Asia’s Game of Thrones with Lowy Institute blog is now live. Part one available here. Stay tuned for part three.

A far right member of the Israeli Knesset, Michael Ben-Ari, recently received a copy of the New Testament in his mailbox, a gift from local Christian missionaries. He was not enthused, reports the Associated Press: Ben-Ari, an Orthodox Jew, was enraged to receive the book, in whose name he says millions of Jews were slaughtered. […]

President Obama’s first term has coincided with the longest period of sustained economic misery in decades, but for the better part of four years, the president has always had one line to fall back on: It’s Bush’s fault, not mine. And for most of that time, the voters have seemed to agree.This may be changing. A […]

One of the more idiosyncratic economic indicators is the Economist’s famed “Big Mac Index,” which uses the price of the popular McDonalds burger to measure purchasing-power parity in various countries.The Economist evidently isn’t the only news source to look to the golden arches as a sign of the economic times. This piece in the Wall Street […]

We’ve already heard from Harold Bloom in the New York Times and Sally Denton in Salon about how Mormonism and its adherents have dark designs on the U.S. government. Now an overlooked report at The Hill gives hitherto unseen insight into how those crafty Mormons plan to impose themselves upon the American republic—by getting people […]