Anemic economies and burgeoning immigrant populations are straining both the economic health of and political support for Europe’s welfare systems.

Inflation is rising, capital is fleeing, and strikes, looting, riots and blackouts are spreading. 2013 did not end well for Argentina, but 2014 could be even worse. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has a date with the US Supreme Court, which could deliver Kirchnerismo a knockout blow.

Russia began drilling a well in its Bazhenov shale formation in Siberia this week, tapping in to what may be the world’s largest single reserve of shale oil. Russia’s coming to the shale game very late; because Russia is already rich in conventional oil and gas, it’s felt little pressure to invest in unconventional reserves. But as its hydrocarbon production begins to stagnate, Moscow is realizing that shale energy might actually be worth looking in to. And no wonder: Russia has the world’s largest reserves of shale oil, and ninth-largest reserves of shale gas.

Rather than continue the passive-aggressive—and sometimes just aggressive—tit for tat between China and India, the Chinese ambassador to India has chosen a softer tack, penning a couple of choicey op-eds in mainstream Indian newspapers rather than the usual angry rants issued by the foreign office in Beijing.

A Chinese company is mass producing cloned pigs at an unprecedented pace, hinting at what may be the future of how we source our meat and test our medical products. The Beijing Genomic Institute (BGI) is cloning 500 pigs a year at a facility in rural China, and these pigs could be very good for our health, for once.

The choir at Canada’s Simon Fraser University has produced an amazing video set to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.” It dramatizes in proper Anglosphere fashion the bad major choices college students these days feel they have. Definitely worth five minutes of your time to enjoy this video, and while you do so keep in mind this graph that continues to make the rounds, most recently on Instapundit.

Those who’ve followed the MSM’s coverage of Pope Francis know that it has been soaked in hopes that Francis’ words and gestures may lead to a relaxation of controversial Catholic teachings. But it now looks like the media and other bodies are starting to catch on to what we’ve all along identified as the real priorities: cleaning up the Curia, reforming the Vatican Bank, and building on Benedict’s steps towards a better response to the sex abuse crisis.

UCLA Prof. Mark Kleiman telling people with “Jewish sounding names” to write their DC representatives to oppose the Iran sanctions bill in the Senate. Apparently, Kleiman thinks that US Senators and Representatives will count email from “Jewish sounding names” as being so important that it will sway their votes. The truth is that Jews don’t actually run the United States, and unless there’s a huge tidal wave of feedback on a hot issue, US politicians tend to do to mail from people with “Jewish sounding names” exactly what they do with 95% of their constituent mail.

Three new books on World War One that question a German-centric account of the blame for WWI have been selling like hotcakes in Germany— suggesting a growing consensus among Germans that their country is not the main country to blame for the war. Both Germany and Japan are becoming ‘normal countries’ again, reasserting their right to define and act on their national interest. A new generation of Germans is looking at the world and at German history and is likely to see things in different ways than their parents and grandparents.

It will cost you, but for a little under $1.5 million in fees and investments, you can buy a passport from the tiny island of Malta. That might not sound like such a great deal unless they’re throwing in a falcon, but since Malta is one of the 28 members of the EU, that passport gives you an automatic right to live and work in any member state. This story underscores that the separation of citizenship from residency is growing throughout the world. The world we live in today isn’t the democratic and liberal utopia that we sometimes like to think it is —and it won’t be until it’s as easy for an 18 year old Turk to bum around the US for a summer as it is for US college kids to see Istanbul over the break.