This paper is dedicated to the doyen of chalcidology, Zdenek Bouček, in the year of his 81st birthday.

An accession of the Republic of Turkey to the European Union seems to have moved off the radar.

A dissident detained seven weeks ago in northeastern China has been charged with subversion, a human rights group reported Wednesday. Police in the town of Anshan in Liaoning province notified Wang Zechen’s family of the charges on Wednesday, according to the Information Center of Human Rights and Democracy in China.

He’s physical and monosyllabic. He does all sorts of cool shit, and he subtly rediscovers his own heroism without making a big thing out of it. But he’s a supporting character, and he knows it.