The EU’s carbon agenda has launched a trade war that has China blocking purchases of Airbus’s troubled new jumbo jets; now word comes that the EU climate agenda is beginning to fall apart at home.The European Union’s ambitious low carbon plan collapsed yesterday when Poland vetoed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically after 2020. […]

What is happening in Syria is terrible, and Butcher Assad needs to go, but that is all the more reason why the press needs to cover this story with care.On Friday, the NYT ran a long, detailed weeper about the plight of Kurdish refugees fleeing Syria into Iraq.But somehow the picture doesn’t live up to […]

The controversial Keystone XL pipeline was struck down for the second time this year, and once again President Obama’s fingerprints are all over it. In January, the Obama Administration made waves by vetoing the construction of the pipeline before the February 21st deadline, but on Thursday the president went further, personally calling a number of […]

Good times continue to roll in Iran, according to the Wall Street Journal: Iran has dramatically increased executions over the past decade and abused the rights of students, women, journalists and religious minorities, according to a new United Nations report. . . .It cites an “alarming increase” in executions, from fewer than 100 people in […]

Watson’s entry into the job market is only the latest, clearest danger signal for white-collar jobs. The trouble has in fact been brewing for quite some time. A new study cited in The Atlantic refers to the past few years as a “lost decade” for college graduates, who have seen their (inflation-adjusted) entry-level wages fall […]

Those excitable greens are at it again. Regular Via Meadia readers are well aware of how alarmist hysteria, often underpinned by sloppy science, has undermined the credibility of the environmental movement and the cause they seek to advance. According to Michael Levi of the CFR, Canadian hockey fans are the latest target of a green terror campaign.Levi […]

Rahul Gandhi and his Congress Party lost big in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, in recent elections for the state assembly. The left-wing Samajwadi Party (SP) won a large enough majority to oust the incumbents (Bahujan Samaj Party) from the roost.This is bad news for the Congress Party, dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has reigned […]

China and Europe have been butting heads this week over Europe’s new environmental regulations for aviation. The Wall Street Journal reports that China is putting orders for 45 Airbus planes by Chinese airliners on hold, costing the European manufacturer $12 billion in revenue. While the Chinese haven’t made any direct statements to this effect, most […]

South Africa will not nationalize its mining industry, said Deputy President Kgalema Molanthe this week, but the turmoil rippling through South Africa’s economy, and its political leadership, is not over.“It is not going to happen,” Molanthe told the BBC, confirming that the mines would not be nationalized. The nationalization campaign was championed by Julius Malema, formerly […]

The IBM supercomputer known as “Watson” is best known for its victory on Jeopardy, but its creators have much bigger plans for it: Citigroup has just announced that it has hired the computer, in what the Wall Street Journal refers to as “the beginning of the end of human employment at banks.”Watson is already on the […]