BARACK OBAMA‘S re-election hopes were dealt a setback by Mitt Romney‘s relentless attack on his economic record at Wednesday’s presidential debate. Today, he got a lifeline from an unlikely source: the economy. In September, the unemployment rate plunged, unexpectedly, to 7.8%, from 8.1% in August. It was the first time it fell below 8% since […]
Edelmina Flores thanks God and Hugo Chávez for her apartment in a new housing complex in the Venezuelan president’s home state of Barinas. She might also want to thank the Chinese government. Since 2007, the China Development Bank has lent Venezuela $42.5 billion, backed by revenue from Venezuelan crude. That sum accounts for nearly a quarter […]
Despite all the attention the trade deficit receives each month, little heed has been paid to the rapid expansion of U.S. exports, which have been growing nearly three times faster than gross domestic product since 2005. As a share of the U.S. economy, exports are at their highest point in 50 years. Rather than slow […]
No one in the 20th century was responsible for more deaths than Mao Zedong (1893-1976), chairman of the Chinese Communist Party; not Lenin, Stalin or even Hitler. The sheer size of China meant that Mao’s vicious, carefully premeditated policies led to more death, starvation, suffering and bloodshed than the work of anyone else in history’s […]
Parts of Aleppo‘s historic souk, or marketplace, have been burnt to the ground. The storied Sissi House, one of the region’s finest restaurants and famous for its tasty cherry lamb kebabs, has reportedly burnt down. Dar Zamaria, part of a wave of chic boutique hotels being carved out of Ottoman merchant houses (and which I reviewed […]
It was five o’clock on a Sunday in May, two hours before showtime, but already thousands of K-pop fans had flooded the concrete playa outside the Honda Center, a large arena in Anaheim, California. Tonight’s performers were among the biggest pop groups in South Korea—shinee, f(x), Super Junior, EXO, TVXQ!, and Girls’ Generation. In the […]
In 2006 Egyptian human rights activist Wael Abbas posted a video online of police sodomizing a bus driver with a stick, leading to the rare prosecution of two officers. Later, Abbas’s YouTube account was suddenly suspended because he had violated YouTube‘s guidelines banning “graphic or gratuitous violence.” YouTube restored the account after human rights groups informed its parent company Google that Abbas’s posts were a […]
Here is one way you can put the life of Brajesh Mishra in context. If you asked the top leadership of this UPA government to name one person they could inherit from the NDA, the answer was instant: Brajesh Mishra. Obviously, this was not primarily for his strategic (as in security and foreign policy) talent. […]
If you were to list the factors with the biggest potential impact on the business world over the next few decades, you’d likely cite some common themes – evolving technology, the globalization of markets, and fiscal challenges in Western countries, perhaps. But here’s one you might not have considered: women. According to our research, nearly […]
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi has won grudging respect from detractors in his first 100 days by sending the army back to barracks faster than anyone expected and raising Egypt’s international profile in several newsmaking visits abroad. Yet his political fortunes and those of the Muslim Brotherhood which propelled him to power may well depend on his […]
looking beyond borders 