Last year’s elections ushered in a new era in Tar Heel politics. The state elected a new Republican governor and a GOP-controlled House and Senate last fall, just four years after voting for Barack Obama, the first Democratic candidate the state had supported in 32 years.NC GOPers aren’t wasting time making use of their new […]

The fight among state Democrats over what to do with California’s surplus is getting heated. Just three years after facing a $60 billion deficit, something between $1.2 and $4.4 billion in extra cash is projected to come California’s way. Governor Jerry Brown is determined to avoid the financial disaster that followed California’s last surplus by […]

China is beefing up its presence in the Caribbean and making it clear that the region is a strategic priority going forward. Over the past few months, Beijing has begun investing hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure investment in countries very much in need of that money, still recovering from Hurricane Sandy. And in addition […]

It’s been clear for some time that Hezbollah fighters were aiding Assad in the Syrian Civil War, but now it’s official: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah announced on Saturday that Hezbollah is fully committed to keeping Assad in power, making the Lebanese terrorist group one of the key players in the conflict.It’s never a good sign […]

After their drubbing in the 2012 election, the California chapter of the GOP had reached a low point, with the Democrats holding the Governorship as well as a supermajority in the State House. But only six months later, the party is already showing signs of life after new State Senator Andy Vidak defeated his Democratic rival […]

When I read a certain front-page article in the New York Times on Friday, my mind immediately hurled itself, and much of the rest of me with it, back to Poland in 1772. I can’t help it; my mind does that sometimes, since, I guess, that’s where my forebears were living at the time. But […]

Doctors in Ohio have, for the first time, used a 3D printer to create an airway splint for a critical patient. AP reports: Because of a birth defect, the little Ohio boy’s airway kept collapsing, causing his breathing to stop and often his heart, too. Doctors in Michigan had been researching artificial airway splints but […]

Seeking to start off on the right foot, Nawaz Sharif’s newly-elected government in Pakistan is on the verge of getting a large loan from Saudi Arabia to help it keep the lights on across the country this summer—as much as $5 billion in cash and deferred payments on Saudi energy exports.The FT provides some useful context […]

The lower house of France’s legislative branch voted this week to allow the country’s universities to teach more classes in English. Up until now, French schools have been required to teach in their mother tongue. But there are some exceptions to this rule, and the proposal that just passed expanded the exceptions to this rule.The vote sparked […]

President Obama has a strategy for American counterterror policy and he is sticking to it; that was the core message of the speech the President gave Thursday at the National Defense University.Confronted by a troubling strategic and political situation in the world at large as well as in the complex conflict that he does not […]