At least six countries have competing territorial claims to islands in the South China Sea, one of the world’s vital shipping lanes and home to abundant oil and gas reserves. In this complex strategic environment, economic competition bolstered by nationalist sentiment could disrupt American efforts to foster peace and stability in the region.As the Eurasia […]

The Wall Street Journal reports that home prices are rising at the fastest rate since the beginning of the housing crash. One data firm found house prices rising by 6 percent in the last quarter alone. Freddie Mac’s estimates are lower, at 4.8 percent, but this is still the fastest single-quarter increase since 2005. On […]

Egypt has decided to act against radical Islamists in Sinai, killing twenty in the most recent strike. The Financial Times has details: Overnight, Egyptian military helicopters fired missiles around Shaikh Zuwaid, a village 10km from the border with Gaza. Eyewitnesses were quoted as saying they saw two military planes flying over the town and heard […]

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the American South and Midwest are surging ahead of the Northeast and West Coast in job offerings. WSJ: A regional breakdown of the figures shows significant variation across the country. In the Midwest, hiring is up nearly 38% in the recovery, and the hiring rate — the number of […]

Heavy new taxes on les riches are prompting many to think about getting out of France, reports the NYT: President François Hollande is vowing to impose a 75 percent tax on the portion of anyone’s income above a million euros ($1.24 million) a year. . . .A chill is wafting over France’s business class as Mr. […]

The storm thrashing the debt ridden economies of America and Europe seems to have made landfall in the Caribbean. The Financial Times reports: The decline in tourism – and the closure of its struggling sugar industry in 2005 – contributed to tipping St Kitts and Nevis over the fiscal cliff this year. With debts equivalent […]

We thought we’d plumbed the depths of political sleaze and voter rip-offs in California, but it turns out things there are even worse than we thought. Take a look at this story that comes from the Voice of San Diego: Last year the Poway Unified School District made a deal: It borrowed $105 million from […]

By Roger BerkowitzConspiracies are everywhere. From the President’s birthplace to U.S. involvement in 9/11, conspiracy theorists rule the airwaves. It is easy to mock those who purvey false certainties, but that should not stop us from taking them seriously. When people feel threatened and uneasy, in times of spiritual homelessness and economic dislocation, there is […]

Most of us outside the bubble think that the mainstream media is pretty pro-Obama. We remember all those comparisons to Lincoln and FDR in the heady early days of the administration.But apparently that’s not how it looks from the Oval Office; the president thinks he’s not getting a fair shot from the press. The New […]

Charles Darwin published his culture-shaking Origin of Species in 1859. It immediately provoked a passionate controversy. This is hardly surprising. The Darwinian culture shock can be compared to an earlier one: the Copernican one. Copernicus made people see the earth as one of several planets circling the sun, rather than as the center of the […]