The bottom line

Foreign investors are losing their appetite for U.S. bonds. Foreigners represented only 5.8 percent of bidders at last week’s auction of 10-year Treasury notes, down from an average of 25 percent over the past eight weekly auctions.

London Daily Telegraph

Iraqis are opening filling stations just to obtain rights to government-subsidized fuel shipments. Most of the fuel is sold on the black market, and some of the profits finance the anti-U.S. insurgency.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The New York Times

Chinese firms are involved in 3,500 investment projects in the U.S., up from 1,500 five years ago, according to a study by Marysville University. The total value of Chinese investment in the U.S. is now as much as $7 billion.

U.S. News & World Report

U.S. sales of Irish whiskey grew 20 percent last year, to 860,000 nine-liter cases. To meet demand, whiskey distiller Bushmills is running three shifts a day, seven days a week.

Marketwatch.com

The University of California, Berkeley, has amassed a $1.1 billion fund to retain top professors. The money will be used to match any salary offers its academic stars receive from wealthier rivals such as Harvard or Yale.

Chronicle of Higher Education

The value of some classic cars has declined by about a third from two years ago, in more fallout from the credit and housing messes. “Home equity was the ATM out of which a lot of people were withdrawing money to have fun,” says McKeel Hagerty of Hagerty Insurance Agency.

The Wall Street Journal