Japan’s foreign policy, Gideon Rachmann writes in the Financial Times, “hovers between the ludicrous and the sinister.” A handful of mistakes and gaffes in recent weeks by Abe administration officials has irked South Korea and China and encouraged them to grow friendlier with one another at Japan’s expense. The same ludicrous diplomacy has embarrassed Washington, […]

I have not previously dragged out an issue from one post to the next, but I will this time. I just came across two news items that further illustrate a point I made in my most recent post. Most of that post dealt with the persecution of Christians in many countries, compared with which some […]

Elon Musk has a dream: shuttling people, inside a tube much like the one you use at the drive-thru window at your local bank, from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes. At 700+ miles per hour. If that sounds like a science fiction concept, that’s because it is. But if anyone is capable […]

In what will likely be looked back on as a watershed moment for Mexico, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto unveiled his promised reforms to the country’s state-owned oil and gas monopoly yesterday, reforms that could have Mexico joining the North American energy revolution. The bill, which is expected to get the two-thirds majority it needs to […]

Obamacare isn’t the only huge, potentially dangerous transformation of our health care system currently underway. The NYT reports that the pace of hospital consolidation has rapidly increased in the last several years, rivaling the centralization frenzy of the 1990s: Hospitals are merging faster and in greater numbers than they have in years. After holding steady […]

Air pollution contributed to the deaths of an estimated 1.2 million people in China in 2010, and it costs the country nearly six percent of its annual GDP in health care costs, material damages, and premature deaths. Beijing’s air quality is “crazy bad“, and the country’s toxic smog is driving China’s urbanites out of its megacities. […]

As the Western military role in Afghanistan winds down, Pakistani militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba are turning their focus to India. The border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir has been unusually violent in the past few weeks, and an attempted attack on the Indian consulate in Jalalabad last week was a “message from the ISI” […]

It’s taken a while, but mainstream publications are finally coming to terms with the severity of the public pension crisis. After Detroit declared bankruptcy last month, the NYT noted that Chicago could be next in line. Now Salon is weighing in with an even more expansive warning that Detroit’s and Stockton’s attempts to discharge their pension obligations […]

Yet another crucial provision of the Affordable Care Act will be delayed. After giving employers an additional year to comply with the employer mandate, the Obama administration has now announced that insurers will have until 2015 to conform to the cap on annual consumer costs. NYT: The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, […]

The Northern Sea Route has captured the imagination of sailors and explorers through the ages, as well as bringing some unlucky souls to their early deaths in frigid waters. The crew of the Yong Sheng, a 19,000-ton Chinese cargo ship, almost certainly won’t risk that fate in its voyage from Dalian in northeast China, around Norway, to […]