Nearing the end of his second term, George W. Bush sought to salvage Russian-American relations with a visit to Sochi in April 2008, but then a few months later, Russia’s invasion of Georgia brought the bilateral relationship to its lowest point in twenty years. President Obama came to office intent on repairing the relationship and […]

China has categorically denied that its military is engaged in hacking activities, as detailed in a report released yesterday. “Chinese military forces have never supported any hacking activities,” Geng Yansheng, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry, retorted at a press briefing in Beijing today.A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry added to this retort by blaming the U.S. […]

The field of competitors for this year’s best foreign affairs book has just narrowed, as Foreign Policy has released the short list of the five books still in the running for the Lionel Gelber Prize. As we’ve previously reported, this year I was privileged to be on the jury that chooses the winning book, and I would recommend every single one of […]

Business lending has shot upward dramatically over the past few months, and many businesses report that banks are now competing to hand out loans, often at very generous rates. This is a sharp reversal from the climate of the past three years, in which lending was down and banks were constantly berated by analysts for […]

Researchers now claim that brain scans can indicate your politics: A team of political scientists and neuroscientists has shown that liberals and conservatives use different parts of the brain when they make risky decisions, and these regions can be used to predict which political party a person prefers.Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left […]

Here’s a new product that could send a shiver down the spine of editors across the country: a new app called Drafts. Billed as the “Uber for Writing”, here’s how the founder describes the service: One constant I’ve recognized in my writing is how much feedback I like to have. I’ll write an email, and […]

The developing world has surpassed the developed world in the use of productivity-boosting genetically modified crops. The Financial Times reports that 2012 was the first year in which more than half of the world’s GMO crop areas were in developing countries.Even Cuba and Sudan are getting in on the act. Better news yet, countries like Brazil aren’t just […]

Andrew Jackson still lives: The American public’s foreign policy priorities look very much like something the former President would have recognized. In a recent Gallup poll, 88 percent of Americans ranked “preventing future acts of international terrorism” as a “very important” foreign policy goal, narrowly beating out stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and supplying America’s […]

Big Tobacco and the anti-smoking lobby are now unlikely allies against a common enemy: Obamacare. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies can hit smokers with significantly higher premiums. Here’s the problem, as the Washington Post reports: Although low- and middle-income tobacco users will get premium subsidies meant to make health insurance more affordable, that government […]

If you need yet another hint that something is way off in America’s education system, you need look no further than this story in yesterday’s New York Times. It gives a brief snapshot of today’s labor market, where a college degree has become the effective equivalent of a high school diploma: the minimum requirement for getting […]