The Obama administration is letting Shinzo Abe know it isn’t too keen on his plans to change the profile of Japan’s military. The Japan Times has more: Washington has told Tokyo that if Obama openly welcomes Abe’s drive to allow Self-Defense Forces troops to engage in collective self-defense—the right to come to the defense of an […]

Nuclear talks with Iran are on again, as the world gears up for yet another round of negotiations and Iran hastens its uranium enrichment program at the Natanz facility. Expectations are low among the “E3 plus 3” negotiating coalition (the UK, France, Germany, the U.S., China, and Russia) for what could be one of the […]

In perhaps an ominous sign for its economy, New York City has fallen behind both Mexico City and Toronto in new office space construction planned for 2014, Bloomberg reports. Whether you like the look of jagged city skylines or not, plans for new skyscrapers in a city’s downtown area are usually a sign that times are booming: Commercial real […]

Rising costs are forcing major interest-group showdowns in the health care industry. The Wall Street Journal reports on one battle brewing in Kentucky, where physician assistants are fighting MDs to gain more autonomy and responsibility for caring for patients: Physician assistants are lobbying the state legislature to repeal a law that says that for the first […]

Massive shale oil reserves could give California one of the biggest oil booms on Earth, but the uber-powerful California green lobby is gearing up for the fight of its life.The stakes of the battle could be huge, reports the New York Times. Hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs for Californians, versus environmental concerns about fracking, […]

Edward Luce has written a thought-provoking column in this weekend’s FT arguing that the rise of the robots is a sign of tough days ahead. The increasing automation of everything from manufacturing to education to health care will especially hit the middle classes of the developed world. A taste: With each month, the US economy becomes […]

We’ve paid a lot of attention at VM to public-sector pensions, where unfunded liabilities at the state and local level are forcing governments to choose between honoring promises to retired workers and providing basic services to citizens. But the private sector, despite having to live up to tighter accounting standards than the ones politicians set […]

This week two essays looked at America’s post-Blue Model future. The first argued that blue elites are wrong to think that wealth and power will be ever more concentrated in the hands of a beneficient elite that provides for the rest of the population. We can manage the transition from an industrial to an information […]

It’s a story Alfred Hitchcock would love. Baboons, extraordinarily social animals whose collective noun is appropriately “troop” are harassing a Saudi village, targeting houses in coordinated assaults while cleverly avoiding poison bananas the villagers have left behind. Arab News brings us the bizarre story: A minor war has broken out south of Qunfudah in the village […]

Over at Foreign Policy, Dan Drezner pooh poohs the string of pearls idea—that China is actively building a network of naval bases and friendly countries around Asia, a noose that tightens around India’s neck. Dan doesn’t think China’s latest move into Pakistan actually amounts to much.He’s right that some journalists have overhyped the clear and […]