Administration

Many of our 3000-odd email digest subscribers got a weird 'Page not found' message in their inbox today instead of the usual daily summary of what has appeared on The Interpreter. We re-sent today's edition of the digest to all those subscribers and they should now have a correct copy. We

The Interpreter is putting its feet up over Easter; we\'ll be back with normal blogging next Wednesday. Enjoy the break and see you then. Photo by Flickr user Reinis Traidas

BBC World News Correspondent Mishal Husain traveled to Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt documenting how young political activists were using social media for her series, How Facebook Changed the World: The Arab Spring. Here\'s part 1 of the program (all four parts available on YouTube

The 2012 Global Go-To Think Tanks Rankings were released last week, ranking the Lowy Institute again in the top 30 Global think tanks outside the US and fifth in Asia – its highest-ever ranking. The only survey of its kind, the University of Pennsylvania\'s rankings take on the

 Tomorrow is Australia Day, a national holiday; normal blogging will resume on Friday.  Photo by Flickr user gordonflood.com

With The Interpreter\'s Assistant Editor, Andrew Carr, leaving us soon to pursue an academic career, the Lowy Institute is looking for a new part-time assistant online editor. The position will help build the Lowy Institute\'s online presence, supporting The Interpreter, our social media presence

We\'ll be back tomorrow for our final day of publication for the year, but I thought I\'d get in early with my best wishes. In fact, Sir Humphrey will do the honours

Two apologies: first, for the short outage earlier today, which has now been fixed. Second, the Lowy Institute has an in-house event today, which means it will be a slow day on The Interpreter. Check in with us later in the day, as we may have some stuff for you on the uranium issue, but normal

We\'ve added new sharing options at the bottom right-hand corner of each post (hit \'refresh\' on your browser if you don\'t see it or it looks wrong). We\'ve replaced the old \'Share\' button, which was a bit of a social media catch-all that barely anyone used. The new options let you

We\'re hearing that the blogeditor@lowyinstitute.org and blogauthor@lowyinstitute.org email addresses are bouncing for a number of users. If you do want to send us feedback, please keep trying, as these addresses seem to be working at least part of the time, or you can email me direct on sroggeveen(

This arrived in my inbox yesterday from the John Button Foundation:  Lowy Institute\'s executive director, Michael Wesley, and visiting fellow, Hugh White, are both on the shortlist of this year\'s $20,000 John Button Prize for writing on public policy and ideas for Australia\'s future.&

  The Lowy Institute is looking for a new-media literate strategic communications professional who will work with our research staff to build the Institute\'s international profile as one of the leading think tanks in Asia and the Pacific, and to broaden the Institute\'s impact, reach and

I'm pleased to announce that Andrew Carr has today started work as Assistant Editor of The Interpreter. Andrew is completing a PhD on Australian foreign policy in Southeast Asia (1983-2010). He also has a degree in journalism and has been a very active blogger and twitterer, which makes him

Tomorrow is Australia Day, a national holiday. Normal blogging resumes on Thursday. Photo by Flickr user monkeyc.net

It was humbling to discover this morning that Nitin Pai, founder of Pragati magazine, has nominated The Interpreter as his favourite blog. Nitin Pai is one of India's most active young bloggers and strategic commentators, and a policy entrepreneur. As well as running Pragati, Nitin

I don't often use this space to promote the site, on the assumption that the work can speak for itself. But scanning the page at the end of this Monday, it occurs to me that The Interpreter has had a particularly good day. In just the last eight hours or so we've featured, among other things,

Below, Edward vents about 'in terms of', but first, Kirill Reztsov says Sam has misused the term 'passive voice': Sorry Sam. You are wrong on the passive voice. Both examples are in the active voice, in that the subject of the sentence is doing something. The issue (subject) overshadowed (

(Or, in lolspeak: 'Lowy iz in ur internets, analyzin ur forun poliseez.') If you've been following the Lowy Interns Twitter feed and suddenly find it quiet, it's because we've changed the name of our account. You can now find us here for updates on the latest papers, blog posts and links

It was a busy weekend for The Interpreter, yet we never lifted a finger — the spike in incoming traffic was all on account of material we posted on Friday. Readers flocked to Jim Molan's personal reflections on GEN Stanley McChrystal, thanks to a recommendation from Andrew Sullivan's Daily

Looks like the problem you identified yesterday is fixed. Thanks for your patience, everybody, and let me know if you're still having problems

Here's Graeme Samuel, Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, in a recent speech about the future of media and telecommunications (emphasis added): Throughout the day I receive updates from The Australian, the ABC and The Age and twice a day I get a summary of business

The Interpreter seems to be all about buying and selling today, whether it's a UN Security Council seat or, ahem, one's strategic virtue. To reinforce the retailing theme, check out the eBay bidding on my colleague Anthony Bubalo's Lowy Institute paper, Joining the Caravan: The Middle East,

It looks as if rumours of a staff revolt at China's biggest and most influential business magazine, Caijing, are true (more reports here and here). It has been noted in the Australian media that the Lowy Institute had organised a conference with Caijing, to be held in Sydney in September. I

We're back after the third long outage in two weeks. Our ISP assures us it has now identified the problem and is working on a long-term fix, so this should be the last time this happens. It better be. We have so many readers who check in with us daily or even more than once a day. I just hope we