In May 2012 Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, proposed a ban on the sale in public places of large-sized containers (over 16 fluid ounces) of sugar-sweetened drinks. Most soda beverages will be affected. The ban will have to be promulgated by the city’s public health agency, which is controlled by the mayor—so […]

With the presidential race essentially tied and the final 100 days of the world’s most grueling marathon almost here, Governor Romney gave what was widely billed his first big foreign policy speech at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nevada.It was not a speech that will change the election or […]

AFP reports that the European Union declines to consider Hezbollah as a terrorist organization: The European Union turned down a request on Tuesday by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to blacklist Hezbollah as a terror group after last week’s deadly bombing in Bulgaria. “There is no consensus for putting Hezbollah on the list of terrorist […]

After an all-too-brief post-election honeymoon, economic reality is beginning to crash down on France’s new Socialist president, François Hollande. French auto companies are closing factories, and the Hollande government is mostly powerless to do anything about it. As the BBC reports: President Hollande’s campaign slogan was “change is now” but, since he has been in […]

Round two of WRM’s interview on Asia’s Game of Thrones with Lowy Institute blog is now live. Part one available here. Stay tuned for part three.

A far right member of the Israeli Knesset, Michael Ben-Ari, recently received a copy of the New Testament in his mailbox, a gift from local Christian missionaries. He was not enthused, reports the Associated Press: Ben-Ari, an Orthodox Jew, was enraged to receive the book, in whose name he says millions of Jews were slaughtered. […]

President Obama’s first term has coincided with the longest period of sustained economic misery in decades, but for the better part of four years, the president has always had one line to fall back on: It’s Bush’s fault, not mine. And for most of that time, the voters have seemed to agree.This may be changing. A […]

One of the more idiosyncratic economic indicators is the Economist’s famed “Big Mac Index,” which uses the price of the popular McDonalds burger to measure purchasing-power parity in various countries.The Economist evidently isn’t the only news source to look to the golden arches as a sign of the economic times. This piece in the Wall Street […]

We’ve already heard from Harold Bloom in the New York Times and Sally Denton in Salon about how Mormonism and its adherents have dark designs on the U.S. government. Now an overlooked report at The Hill gives hitherto unseen insight into how those crafty Mormons plan to impose themselves upon the American republic—by getting people […]

So a dictatorial government with proven links to terrorists has admitted to having weapons of mass destruction. The Financial Times has a useful roundup of the latest developments in Syria: While fierce fighting continued on Tuesday in Damascus and Aleppo, a foreign ministry representative told a press conference that “any chemical or bacterial weapon will never […]