Speculation has touched off the biggest gold rush in history, and that gold rush is straining Peru's society and environment.

Our modern cornucopia of consumer goods is supposed to make us happier, but it doesn't. Here's why.

The rising prospect of Kurdish independence, with Iraqi Kurdistan as its epicenter, portends major disruptions in Southwest Asia and beyond.

American music—not just playing and listening to it, but making and selling it—is a portal to cultural awareness.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Americans lost a "sensibility about time and space," says Robert D. Kaplan. His new book seeks to restore it.

Sincerity, a quality we typically think of as a constant and unchanging human virtue, is anything but.

Iraq will become the world’s second-largest oil exporter within two decades and will account for 45 percent of the growth in global supplies this decade, according to an International Energy Agency report examined by the Financial Times.All this will come to pass, of course, if Iraq remains stable enough to continue growing its oil production. […]

It all started with the Myitsone Dam in northern Burma. The dam’s Chinese builders, confident that they had the support of the decision-makers who mattered (Burmese politicians), ignored or were unaware of local resistance to the dam. But the Chinese soon found out just how important local resistance can be. The locals protested, and Thein […]

China’s recent assertiveness in Asia continues to set off destabilizing consequences that are unfavorable for China’s own interests, as Michael Auslin writes in the WSJ: Mr. [Yoshihiko] Noda [Japan’s Prime Minister] has pushed back forcefully against Beijing’s pressure. He dispatched 50 Coast Guard cutters to the islands, refused to surrender Japan’s claims of ownership, and bluntly […]

The labor turmoil in South Africa is spreading to the financial markets, and South Africa’s currency, the rand, is plunging against the weak U.S. dollar.For political economists, Africa wonks, and geopoliticians, this is bad news. Just as the fabulous mineral wealth in South Africa’s mines serves as an engine for the whole economy, labor relations […]