It’s time for China and the US to have a talk

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NEED TO KNOW:

China and the US have not been feeling very chummy lately, to put it mildly. There was the jaw-droppingly devastating hack on US officials' personnel data — which has been attributed to China (who else), home of the world's most prolific and relentless cyberspies. There are the endlessly ratcheting tensions around the artificial islands Beijing is building in disputed waters, which the US insists it will continue to fly over. And there has been a notable darkening in Washington's view of China, with most experts who had previously called for engagement now saying, "Pssh, what good has it done? How can we stop them?"

That's why it's particularly important that today, high officials from the world's two megapowers will sit down at the seventh annual Strategic and Economic Dialogues in Washington, DC. Talks will touch on all the above negative news, but will also try to focus on a few areas of potential cooperation: climate change, Afghanistan, and Iran. Already, China's state-run media has shifted positive, stressing the need to "overcome obstacles" and build trust.

That said, don't expect any major breakthroughs. Those will probably have to wait — if they do happen — until China's supreme leader Xi Jinping visits Barack Obama on US soil this autumn. 

WANT TO KNOW:

Hey, looking for some light, beach-y summer reading? Lloyd's of London, an insurance giant known for insuring huge, unusual risks, has commissioned a cheerful new study, reports GlobalPost's London-based Senior Correspondent Corinne Purtill.

In it, researchers found that all it would take is three weather-related natural disasters — think El Niño, crop disease, and a heat wave — to throw the world's food supply into chaos. Call it Foodmageddon.

Prices spike. Riots break out. Death and privation sweep the Earth. But don't worry. As the study helpfully points out, there is at least one constituency that might benefit from such a catastrophic triple-shock to the world's breadbasket: insurance providers. Such as, by Jove, Lloyd's of London.

STRANGE BUT TRUE:

Europe has a serious problem with anti-Semitism, from the spread of a gesture widely-seen as a veiled "Heil Hitler" salute to attacks on synagogues, kosher grocers, and Jewish-owned businesses. As much as a quarter of the adult world harbors anti-Semitic views. (Not even counting the clueless, Swastika-bedecked teenaged cheerleaders who stirred up controversy in Mexico last week.)

But there are, in Europe at least, spots of good news. The Spanish village of "Camp Kill-the-Jews" has decided to change its name. The tiny hamlet, population 50, voted last year for the change and won approval from the regional government this week.

Nota bene, for connoisseurs of the truly strange-but-true: many residents of the town have Jewish lineage, and some researchers think the name was chosen by medieval Jews who converted to Catholicism and wanted to prove their loyalty by, well, picking the ugliest name they could come up with.

The town's new name: "Camp Jews' Hill."