Ethan Epstein

In February, North Korea conducted its third nuclear weapons test since 2006. The test, performed in defiance of scores of United Nations sanctions, outraged the international community. Within weeks, the U.N. had leveled more sanctions on the rogue regime, beefing up inspections of North Korean cargo, banning luxury exports to the impoverished nation’s appallingly self-indulgent ruling coterie, requiring countries to freeze all financial transactions that might somehow aid the North Korean nuclear program, and barring the transport of bulk cash into the country.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has always been interested in real estate. The billionaire media tycoon owns—as The Weekly Standard goes to press—11 homes, including his primary residence, a 12,500-square-foot townhouse on East 79th Street. (He’s the only New York mayor who’s completely shunned the city’s official residence, Gracie Mansion, where mayors have lived since 1942.)

In the popular imagination, Japan is a tech-obsessed cyber utopia awash in neon lights, “bleeding-edge” electronics, and, of course, robots. While there is some accuracy in the clichés, it’s also true that Japan remains a nation of serious writers and readers, and not just of comic books: Its publishing industry is one of the world’s most robust, generating $22.5 billion in 2011. (In the same period, with three times the population, American publishers grossed $27 billion.) On the Tokyo subway, one often finds more commuters engrossed in novels than in smartphones.