David Cameron finally delivered his long-anticipated speech on the EU, promising that he would put the UK’s membership up to a referendum, provided he wins the next election. The promise of a referendum delighted the euroskeptics in his coalition, though Cameron himself vowed to fight for staying in the EU so long as the upcoming […]

Is China’s population going the way of an aging Japan? The Financial Times has the story: China’s working-age population shrank in 2012, marking the beginning of a trend that will accelerate over the next two decades and have profound implications for the world’s second-largest economy. . . .China’s labour market remains tight in many places […]

The Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University publishes a very informative electronic newsletter about religious developments all over the world. On January 12, 2013, the newsletter carried a story originally published in the Buffalo News, about Joelle Silver, a high school science teacher in a community in upstate New York […]

Food trucks have become the hottest new industry, yet many cities are doing everything they can to stop them in their tracks. In city after city, lawmakers are imposing complicated regulations on food trucks and other street vendors, often in the name of consumer safety, which make it nearly impossible for vendors to actually operate […]

Japan’s hawkish new PM Shinzo Abe is either confused or purposely contradicting himself. Contrary to his anti-China nationalist rhetoric on the campaign trail, Abe dispatched an envoy to Beijing today in what the FT says was “clearly presented as an effort to ease tensions.”And yet, perplexingly, Natsuo Yamaguchi, the envoy, offered a decidedly un-conciliatory message […]

Butcher Assad is getting cocky. As President Obama brought down the curtain on America’s “decade of war” yesterday, Assad reportedly sang a different tune: “I will win, even if Damascus is destroyed.”The source of Assad’s confidence? Iran is helping him assemble a new civilian paramilitary force. Iran’s elite Quds Force is training and counseling the […]

France and Germany celebrated a golden anniversary today: 50 years ago, the Élysée Treaty sealed a relationship between them. But, as longtime expert François Heisbourg writes in the FT, even the jubilant music of the Berlin Philharmonic can’t mask the wheezing of the ailing Franco-German partnership. Last week’s announcement of the Bundesbank’s repatriation of its gold from the […]

So what exactly happened in Algeria last week? You’re getting a distorted picture of the story if you’re just reading newspapers. As an antidote, we direct you once again to our friend and colleague Adam Garfinkle, who gives us an excellent rundown of what the MSM is missing. (And if you haven’t done it yet, […]

Andrew Sullivan and Damon Linker may soon have to find a new intellectual bugaboo. On The Immanent Frame, Marcia Pally rounds up recent data on America’s evangelical population showing that millennials are increasingly disenchanted with the culture wars: Recent trends point to another political transformation within this community—to those evangelicals who have left the right, moving toward an anti-militarist, […]

Has the time of the oligeeks arrived? According to Joel Kotkin over at New Geography, the true power base behind Obama’s second term is the group of oligarchic tech companies that are thriving in America’s new information economy: Last year the tech oligarchs emerged as major political players. Microsoft, Google and their employees were the largest private-sector donors to […]