With 260 reported dead by opposition figures (who, it should be noted, benefit from inflated death totals and cannot therefore be trusted completely), the latest phase in Syria’s slow motion civil war continues.  The government can no longer run the country; the opposition cannot organize an alternative; the international community cannot make up its mind […]

The results of Congo’s recent elections are in: President Joseph Kabila’s party is getting billions of dollars in foreign aid from western governments who for reasons best known to the development wizards and human rights lobby required an electoral farce as the price of continued support.Those are the numbers that mattered to Kabila, and those are […]

The terrible Costa Concordia disaster—a cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Italy, killing 17 people (with 16 others still missing)—has provoked the usual panic. Tourists are cancelling bookings and not making new ones; every ship in the harbor looks like the next Titanic waiting to happen.Royal Caribbean Cruises FT has posted “first-quarter earnings […]

In last week’s State of the Union address, Obama announced plans to encourage manufacturers to return to the United States and reverse a decades-long trend of offshoring manufacturing jobs to low-wage Asian countries. The devil is in the details, but the concept is not wrong. As Via Meadia has noted before, American manufacturing has had […]

As the world suffers through a mix of weather (warm winter temperatures) in the continental US and climate (cold weather) in Alaska and Europe, some interesting new numbers are starting to trickle in.Preliminary reports from the Energy Information Administration’s “Annual Energy Outlook” (which will be fully published in April) suggest that any carbon crisis may […]

News from the Treasury Department is rarely good these days. The latest news, however, should be welcomed by all: as the NYT reports, the department is rolling out a new set of rules that should make it easier for Americans to transfer money saved in 401k accounts to annuities that provide some insurance against running […]

Asia Times is reporting today that, according to “well-placed sources in the Taliban”, large numbers of soldiers in the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police plan to defect to the Taliban after international forces pull out of the country. The Taliban source claimed that leading commanders of both the ANA and the ANP had […]

First he was a robot programmed to accomplish the dark and devious theocratic schemes of the Mormon Church. Now they say Mitt Romney isn’t Mormon enough. The Grey Lady is knocking the former Governor for deviating from the LDS church’s position on immigration: While Mitt Romney is taking a hard line on immigration even as […]

Pakistan’s Supreme Court moved this week to indict Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on contempt of court charges. Gilani has said he will comply with the court’s final decision in the case. The charge stems from a disagreement over whether President Asif Ali Zardari can be tried for corruption in a case related to kickbacks […]

Could Paul Krugman possibly be wrong?  Could the US economy be actually recovering even though the Obama administration hasn’t taken Professor Krugman’s advice?That is the heretical possibility suggested by the encouraging jobs news this morning; 243,000 new jobs and a further fall in the unemployment rate.Other heretical thoughts: just possibly, the US economic model still […]