Perhaps the most useful way to think of this brief comment is as a postscript to what I wrote yesterday. The media reports on Syria today are deeply disheartening—frustrating, really. The basic theme is the realization that the Annan plan has failed, no internal negotiations in Syria are likely to arise at this point, and […]

France’s most populous cities, in order, are Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Nice—and London? According to the BBC, London is now the sixth-largest city in France, as measured by the population of French citizens living within city limits. The British capital’s French population of around 400,000 is large enough to send a representative of the city […]

Writing at Inside Higher Ed, Thomas Terry, associate professor at Idaho State University, spills the beans on anti-Mormonism in the halls of academe. Terry himself is not a Mormon but teaches in a state where 27 percent of the population are Latter-Day Saints and so knows something about them. His piece recounts some of the […]

And now for something completely different: good news from Europe. A new European Commission report suggests that Italy is “decoupling from Spain” and lists the differences between the two countries.The contrast is striking. Unlike Spain, the Italian government is not operating with massive budget deficits. In fact, as the FT reports, the Italian government actually ran […]

President Obama’s signing of a strategic partnership agreement with President Karzai on May 1 and the ratification of a wind-down plan by NATO at its recent summit in Chicago in theory set the terms for the kind of presence the US will have after the “withdrawal” of US forces from that country in 2014. Of […]

Via Meadia has pointed out instances where high Iranian officials have committed themselves to Israel’s destruction. In The American Interest, Sohrab Ahmari and James Kirchick join us in countering those who seek to downplay or deny the very real malevolent and potentially genocidal intent the rulers of the Islamic Republic harbor towards the Jewish state.Their piece, “We Are All […]

Via Meadia has been nervously pointing to signs of slowing growth and stalled reforms in India. The slowdown is taking a heavy toll: In the first three months of 2012, GDP growth dropped to the lowest level in nine years.The FT reports: Sharp falls in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors led Asia’s third-largest economy to […]

The bad news from Spain has just gotten worse: EU efforts to stave off a massive bailout for Spain have been unable to calm markets or renew faith in Spanish banks. The euro has taken a massive beating over the past week, falling to €1.24 against the dollar, down from €1.32 one month ago. Meanwhile, […]

With Spain and Greece now nearing total economic collapse, Europe is in for another summer of high-profile meetings, diplomatic half-steps, and continuing tension between Germany and its Southern neighbors. Amid all the confusion, one question remains: How do Europeans feel about all this? A recent report from the Pew Global Attitudes Project attempts to answer that […]

Reuters reports: In India’s northern desert states, farmers are scrambling to harvest as much as they can of a bean with the power to lift them out of poverty. In the United States, the multi-billion dollar shale energy industry is banking on their success.U.S. companies drilling for oil and gas in shale formations have developed […]