The American lust for driving has tapered off in recent years. Per-capita miles traveled is flagging after more than sixty years of solid growth, driven in large part by car-averse millenials, who traveled 23 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 2001. The outlook for carmakers is grim: people are increasingly capable of working remotely, and more and more are choosing to kill their commute to work from home or some co-working space closer at hand. Meanwhile, the rest of us are spoiled for choice.

One of our regular contributors here at The American Interest, Saim Saeed, who earlier this month penned a review of Husain Haqqani’s recent memoir, also works for the Express Tribune in Karachi. Though you’re forgiven for not keeping up with Pakistani media, Saim’s editorial on his country’s penchant for euphemisms is a nice quick read this Sunday.

The Obama administration is doing everything it can to save the Affordable Care Act in advance of the December 23rd deadline to sign up for coverage, and the panic is showing. For weeks now the administration has been delaying provisions, tweaking standards, and exempting people from the law’s initial rules (e.g. here), and now it has delivered the coup de grace. The New York Times reports that people who have had their insurance cancelled will be exempt from any penalties for non-compliance with the individual mandate in the coming year.It’s still very unclear where all this is going to lead, but this is one the clearest signs of crisis we’ve seen yet from the administration.

Japan and India began second-ever joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean this week, a tangible step toward closer cooperation between China’s two biggest Asian rivals. The relationship between Tokyo and New Delhi is warming, but don’t expect Beijing to sit idly by.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) just submitted a report this week to Congress detailing the status of federal telework, and contained within were encouraging signs for the still-growing phenomenon. The number of federal employees with signed telework agreements—a prerequisite, according to the TEA, for working remotely—nearly doubled from 2011 to 2012. The number of employees considered telework-eligible increased a whopping 49 percent, and the number of federal workers actually teleworking jumped 24 percent. When it comes to telework, the private sector could learn a thing or two from the feds.

America’s pension crisis is one of the biggest stories and challenges of our time, and we’ve been doing our best these past few years to provide frequent and in-depth coverage. For those who want more, Fox Business is providing a new resource that we’ll be checking regularly for all things pension, and you should too.

The debate over MOOCs has quickly become polarized between defenders of the old higher-ed order on one side, and futurists predicting a total transformation of theindustry on the other. (As regular readers will know, we’ve tilted more toward the latter group, though we admit that the technology has seen some setbacks in recent months.) Over at The American, however, an excellent new piece by Edward Tenner threads the needle between these two views; positing MOOCs as both less dangerous and less transformative than either their critics and admirers claim.

Sectarian tensions in Pakistan have gone from bad to worse ever since riots broke out in Rawalpindi a month ago. On Sunday, a Shia cleric was murdered in Lahore. The killing itself was seen as a response to the assassination of a Sunni leader of religious party known for its anti-Shia rhetoric. And on Wednesday, 3 people were killed as a suicide bomber tried to break into a Shia mosque in Rawalpindi. Is Pakistan going the route of Iran and Syria?

The Turkish lira took a tumble on Friday, hitting an all-time low against the dollar amidst rising concerns about the latest political turmoil to hit Erdoğan’s government. Turkey is losing its margin for error. The politics and the economics are both going wrong in a country that not all that long ago was seen as a model for the Middle East.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is opening up the UK’s countryside to drilling—and, yes, that includes fracking—and he’s got a message for the EU: don’t rule out our shale gas.