The green zombie movement for a carbon treaty took a shambling step forward Down Under this week.  The FT has the story: The Australian government scored a victory in its battle to introduce a carbon tax after measures to combat climate change cleared the lower house of parliament by a tiny margin.Carbon traders and climate […]

Brits love their monarchs, but old rules have historically favored princes over princesses in accession to the throne. That may change now, following a proposal put forward by Prime Minister David Cameron. As the NYT reports: Mr. Cameron told the House of Commons on Wednesday that he had written to the governments of 15 other […]

President Obama pushed through long-pending trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia yesterday. The deals have received mixed reviews; some labor leaders criticize say it will kill thousands of American jobs while American exporters cheered the move, saying it will increase U.S. exports by $12 billion or more per year. Yet, by looking at the […]

A new threat to the nascent jobs of the future has emerged: the IRS. The IRS recently announced that it will be rolling out new fees and regulations for individual tax preparers, which are expected to dramatically increase costs for the entire industry. The Washington Post reports: Some fear the IRS campaign against tax fraud […]

Amid the despair and apprehension, some good news: Africa’s middle class is growing. An African Development Bank report suggests that within the next fifty years, the African middle class will reach one billion people, a figure that will undoubtedly draw the attention of marketers. From the Wall Street Journal: Building on the bank’s earlier research, […]

Those pesky Jews are at it again, at least if we believe the Egyptian Supreme Command. At the end of the Wall Street Journal’s article on this weekend’s clashes in Cairo is a quote from a statement by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces explaining who, exactly, was behind the violence: On Monday, an anchor […]

Gilad Shalit appears set to finally come home as part of a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas. PM Netanyahu told members of his cabinet that this is “the best deal that we could have gotten at this time”, but the long term consequences seem more likely to undermine Israeli security than to enhance it. […]

Innocent until proven guilty say the lawyers – and as a matter of law that is true of those accused in Iran’s alleged assassination plot on the Saudi ambassador to the US. The story is still fresh and without all the facts, but whether the ball ends in foul or fair territory, US-Iranian relations are […]

Environmentalism has been the bane of the Obama administration from the beginning.  The Copenhagen summit, the cap and trade fiasco, Solyndra: every time the administration tries to go green, it comes up with egg on its face. The Obama administration’s environmental issues continue to grow. With the Solyndra failure looming large over the administration’s attempts […]

Silvio Berlusconi is a political survivor without peer, but his time as Italian Prime Minister might finally be coming to an end. The FT has the story: Italy’s 75-year-old prime minister stalked grim-faced out of the chamber with calls for his resignation ringing in his ears after his coalition failed by just one vote to […]