As Edward Snowden awaited the papers that will grant him a year of asylum in Russia, The NSA’s General Keith Alexander gave a talk at the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. The Black Hat conference, which we mentioned earlier this week, is the annual get-together for hackers, many of whom are in fact ‘white hats’, […]

One of the biggest challenges facing Obamacare is the “skeptical uninsured,” those Americans—especially young ones—who might choose to pay the penalty rather than buy insurance under the ACA. (Insurance will be more expensive under Obamacare than it is now, and the penalty will be much smaller than the cost of insurance, so it would be […]

Egypt’s interim government has ordered police to squelch the pro-Morsi sit-ins that have formed in Cairo’s Raba’a Al Adiwiya and Nahda squares over the past few weeks. Cabinet ministers termed the gatherings “a threat to Egyptian national security” and called for security forces to “put an end to them.” The WSJ reports:  “This is the […]

Secretary Kerry landed in Pakistan yesterday, and the international media was quick to note the cordial welcome he received,  which seemed a far cry from the dark days of 2011 and 2012 when Islamabad and Washington were at each others’ throats. On the surface, at least, the relationship appears to be back on track: President […]

Shell reported a 60 percent drop in profit in the second quarter as it wrote down $2 billion worth of its investments in North American shale assets. Some analysts are raising warning flags on North American shale, the Wall Street Journal notes, though Shell’s executives still seem bullish: Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser said the write-down doesn’t […]

The shrink’s couch has now moved to your living room. Researchers at the University of Zurich have found that online psychotherapy is as good as or even more successful than in-person psychotherapy at reducing symptoms like depression. Kurzweil News: “In both groups, the depression values fell significantly,” says Professor Andreas Maercker, summing up the results […]

India’s government officially got the ball rolling on the creation of the country’s 29th state this week. Telangana, “an impoverished, water-scarce area” around the thriving city of Hyderabad (where companies like Google and Microsoft have offices), has population of about 35 million (the same as Canada) and will be carved from the eastern state of […]

Eric Fish, a journalist living in China, has an interesting take on all the recent chatter and analysis on China’s economic slowdown. He quite rightly points out that a slowing economy is definitely a big problem facing China’s leaders, but it is hardly the only one, and perhaps not even the most serious.“Right now China […]

For my money (no serious pun intended, as you’ll see), today’s big news is yesterday’s District Court decision by Richard J. Leon to slap down the Federal Reserve’s violation of Congress’ intent in implementing the order in Dodd-Frank to reduce the fees banks can charge for the use of debit cards. This sounds arcane, I […]

The Economist is worried about America’s shambolic pension systems, and you should be too.Many have been arguing recently that Detroit is an outlier, but we wonder whether they have seen the national and state-by-state pension liabilities numbers that Moody’s published and the Economist analyzed. A nationwide shortfall of $1 trillion rounds out the “optimistic discount […]