Much to the surprise (and, one suspects, the chagrin) of the deranged doomsaying wing of the environmental movement, new forecasts of US CO2 emission are out and they point to an even steeper drop than the last set of predictions.No cap and trade, no huge new taxes on oil, no draconian driver restrictions, no air […]

This week Serbia’s government took a hard turn to the right—and to the east. Yesterday the new nationalist president appointed Ivica Dacic, a protégé of the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, as prime minister.Now, along with Nikolic’s nationalists, Milosevic’s old progressive party will dominate the government. Both parties are very interested in tightening Serbia’s alliance with […]

Mexicans head to the polls to elect a new president on Sunday. The election is widely seen as a referendum on current president Felipe Calderón’s drug policy. 50,000 people have died in drug violence since he took office. His party’s candidate is expected to lose.The polls say Enrique Peña Nieto will be the next president. Despite his […]

After years of bad news, public pension funds may finally be seeing some glimmers of light. Reuters reports that returns shot up in the first quarter of 2012 by $179.2 billion, a record high since the data was first recorded. This brings the total value of pension holdings and investments to a relatively high $2.8 […]

If Mahatma Gandhi has access to wi-fi in the afterlife, and is able to keep up with the liberal blogosphere, he must be rolling in his grave this week.Yesterday, members of the postal workers union ended their four-day hunger strike at a rally in front of the steps of the Capitol. Since it began, the […]

A dispute over a few rocky outcroppings in the middle of the ocean threatens to have Japan and China at each others throats.The problem began back in April when Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara announced that the city intended to buy the disputed Diaoyu Islands (see map). The word “islands,” is a bit of an exaggeration; they […]

With U.S., EU and UN sanctions continuing to hit the Iranian economy, Iran’s game of “chicken” isn’t working out that well. The Financial Times reports: A delay in feedstock imports, a result of sanctions, has pushed the price of chicken up 30 per cent over the past week alone. Prices for other staples are also […]

Yet another European summit ended today with yet another round of announcements. Yet again Germany brought Europe and the world to the edge of a global market meltdown and yet again Germany blinked at the last moment. As the relief rally sweeps around the globe (many European stock markets are up two percent or more […]

Now that the spat between China and the Philippines has been temporarily resolved, Beijing’s aggressive posture in the oil- and gas-rich waters has exacerbated tensions with Vietnam.The Financial Times explains the latest showdown: Vietnam on Wednesday accused China of acting “illegally” after state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (Cnooc) invited foreign companies to tender for […]

Not Democrats, not Republicans. The biggest winner in the Obamacare ruling was the Supreme Court.Regular readers know that I think that Obamacare is a flawed approach to some real problems and will end up giving us a health care system under which the young subsidize the middle age as costs continue to rise. Worse, we […]