Two boats headed to Gaza were intercepted by the Israeli Navy yesterday. There were no injuries or incidents. The NYT has the story: The two boats, one Canadian and the other Irish, carried 27 pro-Palestinian activists, journalists and crew members from nine countries who were challenging Israel’s maritime blockade of the Palestinian enclave…The two boats […]

As if the European crisis wasn’t enough to keep the world busy this week, reports of an imminent Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities were being discussed all over the press and the blogosphere.  In a jaw dropping display of disarray, senior Israeli defense and intelligence officials appeared to be overtly leaking deliberations to short […]

Scott Walker move over; San Francisco is the latest front line in the battle against abusive public sector unions.The bluest city in the bluest state in the union has woken up and smelled the latte; generations of extortionate collusion between shamelessly greedy and shortsighted union leaders and unforgivably opportunistic and irresponsible politicians have left the […]

The very Catholic Republic of Ireland—also known as the Island of Saints and Scholars, where abortion remains illegal and more than 30% of the people go to mass more than once a week—has decided to close its embassy to the Vatican.  Yes, there has been a lot of tension since the sexual abuse scandals and […]

Rioting, burning villages, gunmen shooting churchgoers, calls for holy war on the radio, bomb attacks on army bases – the fires are not going out in Nigeria. The BBC reports on the most recent violence: Riots have broken out in a northern Nigerian town after a church was attacked by unknown gunmen, leaving at least […]

This seems to be Via Meadia’s day to praise the New York Times.  Besides publishing an important story on poverty, the NYT also deserves credit for a blog post that sheds light on modern India for a western audience. Such coverage of culture is often overlooked by the western press. The post, on the India […]

As we’ve been hearing for years, census data shows that serious poverty has been rising dramatically in the US. A new article in the New York Times, however, shows that those statistics may be less reliable than often claimed: Concocted on the fly a half-century ago, the official poverty measure ignores ever more of what […]

Sometimes the United States wins even when it loses. That’s the case with the impending deal to supply India with fighter jets: Boeing and Lockheed Martin, two American companies, have already been knocked out of the competition for the contract, which in the neighborhood of $20 billion is one of the largest aviation orders by […]

Europe’s unending petitions for a big-check Chinese bailout are beginning to sound like a broken record. The FT covers its latest iteration: Europe’s courtship of Beijing is moving to a more intense level. Klaus Regling, the chief of the eurozone bail-out fund, is in Beijing discussing possible support. Just a few days ago French President […]

Auditing the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is like draining the septic tank: it needs to be done, but you won’t like what you find.  The WaPo reports that HUD just added another scandal to a forty-six year tradition: At a joint housing and oversight hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, the […]