The U.S. and the EU are now committed to drafting the long-awaited transatlantic free trade pact within the next two years. This idea has been kicking around in one form or another for years, but while a number of serious obstacles remain, both sides are in the mood to get something done quickly, as the FT […]

Obama may already be delivering on his promise to ease immigration restrictions for highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers. A new bill is wending its way through Congress to do just that, as the WSJ reports: The Startup Act 3.0, a bipartisan Senate bill expected to be introduced this week, aims to get 75,000 new “entrepreneur visas” […]

Not even the Muslim Brotherhood trusts Hamas. In a surprise move yesterday, Egyptian forces blocked a network of tunnels that run between Egypt and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip by flooding them with water. The tunnels, used to smuggle everything from fuel to cement to weapons, are now inoperative. Imagine the global outcry if Israel did […]

Patients may soon get cheap, fast, and effective health care right from their desks, according to recent experiments with virtual doctor visits. A new report by Virtuwell clinic, a digital office of nurse practitioners created in Minnesota more than two years ago, finds that virtual visits were on average $88 cheaper than in-person visits and saved on average about […]

All of the major countries of the Eurozone, Germany included, posted losses in the fourth quarter of 2012 as the continent slides deeper into recession. This marks the third consecutive quarter in which the European economy shrank, as Reuters reports: Germany contracted by 0.6 percent on the quarter, official data showed, marking its worst performance since the global […]

Four retired Turkish generals were jailed today pending an inquiry into a “coup attempt” in 1997. This is yet another calculated maneuver by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to ensure that the Turkish armed forces are never again able to illegally take over the government. It was a stern reminder of who’s boss. Reuters reports: In […]

Valentine’s Day is upon us, and while many Americans will use the day for romantic chocolate-filled dinners, we would like to inspire Millenials (American and otherwise) to consider using the day for solving their first big challenge as a generation: stopping the crash in global fertility rates.In his book, What to Expect When No One’s […]

The North Koreans aren’t the only people on the divided peninsula bragging about their new weapons. South Korea says their latest cruise missiles are precise enough to target the window of the North Korean leader’s office. Reuters reports: South Korean officials declined to say the exact range of the missile but said it could hit […]

Nobody wants Time magazine. That’s what seems to be emerging from talks between the magazine’s current publisher Time Warner and Meredith, an Iowa-based publisher of magazines aimed mostly at women in the Midwest. The money losing newsweekly used to be the most important magazine in America; under the leadership of its founder Henry Luce, Time […]

This year’s State of the Union address—like most that came before it—was a policy grab bag of sorts. Slate’s Matt Yglesias offered a good roundup of backgrounders for the President’s various proposals. It’s worth spending some time reading through these because, as Yglesias notes, they’re likely to be the general outlines of Democratic Party policy thinking […]