Income taxes are going up by a third in Portugal on January 1. The FT reports: “A fiscal earthquake”, “armed robbery”, “tax napalm”. Descriptions of the income tax increases facing Portuguese families from January 1 make the fiscal cliff looming in the US sound tame by comparison.Lisbon plans to lift income tax revenue by more […]

For the BRICs, 2012 is ending on a sober note. Taken as a group, stocks in the once red hot markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China are trailing global equity averages. Currently, India is running scared and moving towards a new round of reform as growth slows. Brazil on the other hand has been […]

By all appearances, 2012 was a very good year for OPEC. The cartel’s net oil revenue rose to one trillion dollars this year, with average Brent oil barrel prices the highest they’ve ever been. In real terms, OPEC made more money this year than ever before, exceeding  even the record highs reached during the oil crises […]

Depending on who you ask, al-Azhar University in Cairo is the oldest or second oldest educational institution still operating today. It has a unique status throughout the Sunni world as the most reputable and respected school of Islamic jurisprudence and the opinions of its leading scholars are closely read. Al-Azhar is also a bastion of […]

Argentina’s embattled Libertad gunship has been freed from its three-month imprisonment in a Ghanian port, but the lawsuits from angry American creditors continue. Fortunately for its wounded national pride, Argentina has a new ally in its U.S. court battles: the U.S. attorney general’s office. The Wall Street Journal reports that the AG’s office filed a […]

Facing dismal student performance, collapsing enrollment due to competition from charters, and a crumbling infrastructure, the Philadelphia school district has proposed to shutter about one out of six schools and plow the money saved back into its existing schools: The 237-school district faces a cumulative budget deficit of $1.1 billion over the next five years, […]

As Xi Jinping prepares to succeed President Hu Jintao, a group of 73 Chinese intellectuals has released an open letter on the internet warning that the failure to enact political reform could lead to widespread social unrest: “If reforms to the system urgently needed by Chinese society keep being frustrated and stagnate without progress, then official corruption and dissatisfaction […]

Now it gets tough. Yesterday’s post looked at what divides Christians and other theists from atheists; today we cut deeper and look at what separates Christians from believers in other religions.And the truth is that nothing separates Christianity from other religions like Christmas. That little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying so cutely in […]

Last week we discussed the challenges facing established churches and seminaries attempting to adjust to the changing landscape of the 21st century and finding that many established practices simply don’t work anymore. A new piece in the New York Times describes the opposite phenomenon: In an attempt to appeal to a millennial generation that is […]

Another Christmas has come and gone, and as we always do this time of year, we are revising, updating and running our 13-part “Yule Blog” in daily installments between Christmas Eve and January 6. Catch up on the first six installments here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.But […]