At a ceremony last weekend, President Ma of Taiwan unveiled two gleaming new patrol ships that will increase Taiwan’s presence around disputed waters in the East China Sea. “We will not concede one step” in defending Taiwan’s claim on the islands there, said Ma at the ceremony. The announcement builds on the “water war” incident back in […]

Spain has just announced that it, like France, will miss its deficit target this year. Its deficit is now 6 percent of GDP,  far from the target of 4.5 percent. The EU is now debating relaxing Spain’s terms, but it’s unclear exactly what they have in mind, as the FT reports: The European Commission had […]

The United Nations yesterday approved the first ever global arms trade treaty in an effort to regulate the multibillion-dollar international weapons trade. The treaty is supposed curb the ability of countries like Iran and Russia to sell weapons to countries like Syria, though implementation of the agreement is still years away and no actual enforcement system […]

Looking to get involved in your community? Try teleworking. A new study shows that people are 44 percent more likely to regularly volunteer if they have flexible work arrangements, like flexible schedules and the option to work remotely. The Canadian government released a report yesterday (h/t Globe and Mail) that looks at the link between flexible work arrangements and […]

American employers are scrambling to hire foreign skilled workers. And for the first time in five years, they will hit the allotted annual visa quota just under a week into the process. The WSJ reports: U.S. companies each year can sponsor a total of 65,000 foreigners with at least a bachelor’s degree for a so-called H-1B […]

On March 21, 2013, Law and Religion Headlines, the very useful online newsletter from Emory University, carried a summary of an interview on the BBC with Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury. He is an interesting and appealing figure. Born in 1956, he had an elite education at Eton and Cambridge, then an impressive […]

Drilling giants like Exxon and Shell are safer and more ecologically responsible than their smaller competition. In many industries, scaling up production actually leads to more mistakes and quality control issues, but oddly enough, when it comes to fracking shale in Pennsylvania, bigger companies violate regulations the least. The WSJ reports: As big energy companies buy out […]

One of the ongoing perplexities of President Obama’s Syria policy has been the stark contrast between his muscular rhetoric and halting, hesitant actions. On the one hand, he has insisted that the country’s dictator Bashar al-Assad “must” go and has predicted that his fall is all but assured. But on the other, he has thus far […]

Red tape may soon be a thing of the past in Los Angeles. According to Yahoo, the city has just released a new app that lets citizens communicate directly with city officials: [It] will let residents report potholes, pay city utility bills and look up dog parks at the tap of a virtual button.Instead of calling […]

The sweet scent of cheap gas is luring manufacturing back to the United States. The German chemicals company BASF is one of many energy-intensive firms looking to open plants stateside. The Washington Post reports: Here in Ludwigshafen[, Germany], many people view the United States as the land of the future. Since 2009, BASF has channeled more than […]