If you’re in Pakistan this weekend, you shouldn’t rely on your cell phone. The BBC reports: On Friday, mobile phone services were temporarily blocked in parts of the capital Islamabad, the southern port city of Karachi, and in Quetta in the south-east.The authorities said that more areas would be cut off over the weekend – […]

The murky waters of Thai politics are darker and muddier than usual this week. The ‘yellow shirts’ are back in the streets of Bangkok, demanding the end of the current government. Organizers had spoken of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of supporters. But only around 10,000 turned up, and by dusk the leaders called the rally […]

“Is DR Congo’s cycle of agony unbreakable?” asks the BBC in this recent dramatic headline. The reason for the Beeb’s unhappiness: the latest round of fighting in the eastern Congo where a rebel movement backed, most observers believe, by Rwanda has recently humiliated a pathetic mix of feckless, poorly led UN peacekeeping troops and forces […]

As we noted earlier this week, the age of missile defense is upon us. Israel’s Iron Dome system has acquitted itself admirably in the Gaza War, with potential buyers already lining up to purchase the system for themselves. BusinessWeek provides a good backgrounder on some of the companies and technology responsible for the success: The Iron Dome […]

The Chinese sure are great at gestures perfectly calibrated to irritate and unite all of their neighbors against them. The issue this time: a brand new watermarked map found in the latest Chinese passports which includes a dashed line encompassing most of the disputed islands in the South China Sea. Vietnam and the Philippines were […]

As the VM team re-emerged from the post-Thanksgiving tryptophan-induced haze, we found yet another thing to be thankful for: the world did not end in 1883. A new paper reinterpreting old astronomical data argues that a massive comet disintegrated near Earth and its fragments passed as close as 600km from us in August of that year. […]

Did Israel achieve its strategic goals in Gaza? Haaretz thinks so: Operation Pillar of Defense had two strategic goals—one, to reinstate the Gaza cease-fire with Hamas, which had unraveled in recent months amid increasing hostilities, and two, to stabilize the peace with Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood came to power.[…]Netanyahu showed it was possible to bomb […]

Andrew Sullivan isn’t happy with Via Meadia. This isn’t the first time; when we pointed out that a boneheaded German court decision to ban circumcision on males under 18 criminalized the practice of Judaism in Germany (to say nothing of Islam) and was an assault on religious freedom that Germany’s own better nature would not […]

Violent protests erupted in Cairo and several other large Egyptian cities today, a day after President Morsi claimed what amounts to an almost absolute set of powers. According to the first reports, offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political offshoot the Freedom and Justice Party in Cairo, Ismailia, Port Said, and Suez have been […]

And finally, the classic Thanksgiving hymn, “We Gather Together”.Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.