Pastor Johnson Jauro of the Deeper Life Church in Gombe, a city in northeastern Nigeria, reports that gunmen fired through the windows of his church during services, killing six people and injuring ten. The pastor’s wife was among the dead.  (The BBC has the story.)Gombe is the capital of Gombe state, one of Nigeria’s smallest […]

Christmas was hot in Nigeria last month, when the country was ablaze with church bombings, terrorism and sectarian tension. The heat will only intensify in the New Year, as oil prices spike with an end to nearly four decades of fuel subsidies. From the WSJ: Nigeria had been spending 1.2 trillion naira ($7.3 billion) a […]

With friends like North Korea, who needs enemies? That’s probably what China was thinking after yet another round of needless chest-thumping by its “ally” North Korea reminded all Asia why it might not be such a bad idea to keep the U.S. active and engaged in the region. The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) […]

The Navy’s 27–21 victory in last month’s annual Army-Navy game, the tenth straight win  for the Midshipmen, isn’t the only way Navy is beating Army these days. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s new military budget proposal envisions extensive downsizing in the Army, from its current 570,000 to a much leaner 490,000; the Navy, meanwhile, gets to […]

Anxious economists and investors have fresh cause for concern as Turkey’s economy falters, stumbling from a peak of 9 percent GDP growth in 2010. The FT’s beyondbrics blog has the story: In what Benoit Anne of SocGen described as “the first bloodbath of the New Year”, rates on Turkish one-year currency swaps surged by more than […]

Next time you want to stop a bloodbath, don’t send a war criminal to report on human rights abuses. In a bizarre turn of events, the head of the Sudanese military intelligence has been tasked with ending the crackdown on protesters in Syria as the leader of Arab League observers.Perhaps it doesn’t matter; the Arab League […]

Via Meadia has covered the high speed rail fail in China; now this ‘technology of the future’ seems to be suffering a meltdown here in the US.Since the Obama presidency began, various proposals for high-speed rail have been popping up across the country—Florida, Wisconsin, and California have each considered plans to build the “transportation of […]

FT reports more bad news in a dismal season for Hungary: Hungary cancelled a bond swap auction on Wednesday as the forint hit a record new low against the euro and fears grew about the country’s planned bid for International Monetary Fund/ European Union financial aid. […] As Benoit Anne of Société Générale wrote in […]

The financial crisis, working its way westward across Asia, reached India this week. India’s leaders are worried, really worried. In fact, they’re so worried by the dismal performance of their stock index last year that they have made it easier for foreign investors to invest directly in Indian firms. (FT subscription required) From as far […]

Via Meadia has already reported that Hamas may soon be in the market for a new patron to replace Syria (more background here). It’s no surprise that other regional powers, especially Turkey and Iran, are gearing up for a bidding war, as one can easily see by reading between the lines of this NYT story on the […]