Quick hits and pink picks

-What Commanding Heights was to incoming IPE students at LSE in 07-08, Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money will be to next year's class: your year in a convenient one-hour program.

-Succumbing to financial reality, Russian lawmakers have cut the budget for the Sochi Winter Games by 15%.

-Proving that even cheesy continental television contests aren't absent geopolitical tensions, the Georgian entry for this year's Eurovision final is called "We Don't Wanna Put In", a song that mocks Russia and its Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (get it, Put In=Putin). This is clearly an irresponsible provocation; expect Russian troops in Tbilisi by Sunday!

-Two interesting reports on the intelligence front. First, The Telegraph is reporting that Israel has been conducting a covert war against Iran, "using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime's illicit weapons project." Concluding that a direct military strike is too risky/ineffective/unsanctioned by the US, the Israeli strategy seeks to, according to a former US intelligence officer, "delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach."

Second, the cross section of international terrorism and technology is widely appreciated. Al Qaeda's use of the internet and certain media outlets for propaganda and fundraising is highly developed, as is the use of advanced military technology in attacking terrorist networks (for example, unmanned drones in Pakistan/Afghanistan). But the US may be more than a little unhappy with one of the world's most largest technology firms: Google. The US and Pakistani governments have long denied that the US was conducting military operations from Pakistani soil. Well, apparently a simple search on Google Earth blew that denial out of the water; the Times of London obtained satellite images clearly showing predator drones at Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan as early as 2006.

Ben Bernanke to speak at the LSE

I have turned into something of a podcast junkie recently, and one source of excellent material is The London School of Economics public lecture series. This week, however, there's a particularly prominent guest speaker in the form of US Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. The title of the talk is "Policy Responses to the Financial Crisis" and I highly recommend you tune in. There will actually be a live webcast of the event (Tuesday, 13:00 GMT, 8:00 EST) for those who want visuals.

The trouble with high profile speakers who hold public office is that their talks tend to be vague and pull punches on sticky issues - that Bernanke is operating "between" administrations with different policy response ideas won't help either. That being said, however, it will definitely be worth a listen.

While you're at it, I also highly recommend a talk by Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion - an excellent book on poverty reduction that's aimed at non-academics. You can also find him doing a (shorter) TED talk here.

Obama wants you LSE grads!

There is still hope for all of you unemployed American LSE grads out there. The Obama administration is swelling with LSE alum.

You can apply here.

Congratulations LSEers

Congratulations to everyone who received their results today for the MSc International Political Economy and MSc International Relations programmes at the London School of Economics. They are well deserved.