Less than a week ago, USA Today published an article about the proliferation of Mexican drug-cartel videos on YouTube, claiming that, like Jihadis and insurgents before them, narcocorridos now use the popular website to promote their cause. (Cartel leaders openly ran an ad campaign last year to recruit military deserters, so it’s not as if they’re shy about showing off.) Read More »

If you’re planning on traveling to Bangkok, you may want to avoid packing that Cincinnati Reds jersey you just bought. No, it’s not a gang-warfare precaution; red shirts just happen to be the symbol of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra‘s supporters, who have taken to the streets for a round of aggressive protests that have roiled the country and made international headlines. Read More »

Less than a decade ago, at the dawn of our brave new century, the American newspaper was doing a robust business. Newsrooms at major publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post were brimming with reporters; advertising rates were healthy; and, despite the rapid rise of electronic media in the late ’90s, news websites, still in their infancy, were no match for a fully formed print publication. The future of the news would involve the Internet, an average editor might concede, but it seemed a long way off before the new medium would do battle with the old one. Read More »

Quickly and quietly, amid bailouts and Congressional hearings, Barack Obama is making his mark on some of the most perennially divisive issues in the country. It’s high time we took an issue-by-issue tour of the new team’s policy, to see what it’s accomplished so far, and what we can expect over the next four years. After the jump, we run down down some of the top contenders for hot-button status.

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When Barack Obama picked Joe Biden to be his running mate last September, drug-policy reform activists were displeased. Prospects for revamping the Bush administration’s zero-tolerance approach, critics felt, were undermined by the veteran lawmaker from Delaware — a man who played a major role in crafting some of the country’s harshest drug legislation. Such fears have been allayed in recent weeks, though, with Obama stating his intent to shift from a punitive stance to one that focuses on minimizing health risks. In practical terms, this entails supporting needle-exchange programs, ending raids on medical-marijuana facilities, and, many hope, transforming drugs from a criminal issue into a health one.

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As the recession spreads through European markets, EU leaders are scrambling to overcome the fault lines that threaten prospects for a unified recovery. Last week, a collective of Eastern European nations approaching EU leaders for a $240 billion bailout — only to be promptly shot down by an opposition charge from German chancellor Angela Merkel. Since then, currencies have fallen across the board, with the Hungarian florint and Polish zloty dropping 3 percent against the euro, and the euro itself continuing to fall against the dollar. Striking a balance between national interests and continent-wide initiatives has never come easily for Europe; underlying the difficulties are concerns about protecting jobs, recapitalizing banks, and preserving what remains of a fragile lending system.

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During the last week of 2008, Israel launched an intense military operation against Hamas in the Gaza strip. The purpose was twofold: to dispel rocket attacks that had been terrorizing Southern Israel for months, and to send a powerful message that Israel was more than willing to use overwhelming force to get its zero-tolerance message across. After killing scores of Hamas fighters and civilians in air and ground raids, drawing scorn from much of the world for its actions, Israel abruptly withdrew its forces on January 18. The incursion had lasted 22 days, resulting in hundreds of deaths — another violent chapter in the long history of Middle Eastern hostility.

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Book publishing is used to dire forecasts for its future; the industry’s funeral has been prematurely anticipated for decades. Publishing was supposed to be killed off at various points by television, the Internet, and the general public’s apathy toward reading. But it’s always managed to scrape by — even if, in these scattered times, it’s been increasingly on the back of huge successes like The Da Vinci Code and the Harry Potter series. The stagnant-but-relatively stable industry has also long been seen as “recession-proof”; the thinking goes that consumers will still spend on small, non-luxe goods, such as books, during a downturn.

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The current recession is as American as a jazz musician eating apple pie during a baseball game. That is to say, the United States gave birth to this deepening crisis; it’s our once-mighty financial machinery whose breakdown kick-started a global economic domino effect. Perhaps that’s why, if you live in the suddenly market-obsessed States — where politicos breathlessly dissect new line items in the stimulus package, profligate CEOs inspire public disdain once reserved for George W. Bush, and reports of massive layoffs have become as common a sight on CNN.com as stories about dogs calling 911 — it’s easy to forget that this is a global crisis, not just a domestic one. And despite what cash4gold.com‘s Super Bowl ad might have you believe, the US is not quite on the verge of collapse; other countries are in even direr straits. So if it’s financial schadenfreude you seek, this quick tour around the world should satisfy your fix.

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Late Monday night, we were browsing the pages of BoingBoing (a place we generally go to avoid politics) when we came across this post from Guido David Núñez-Mujica, a biology student from Merída, Venezuela:

“On Saturday, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez decreed that February the 2nd, the anniversary of his ascent to [the] presidency, would be a national holiday.

“The government said that it would enforce the holiday and close and fine any open store. They are doing that and officers from the equivalent of the IRS, the SENIAT, are closing many stores that opened today. The country is paralyzed, no children at school, no classes at the universities, just because [of] the selfish desires of a tyrant who said two days ago that he intends to be in power until 2049 and that there would be war if the opposition wins.”

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