The up and coming economies of Asia are taking one hit after another as the global financial turmoil drags on. Today, it’s South Korea. The BBC has the story: The Ministry of Strategy and Finance says Asia’s fourth-largest economy is likely to grow by 3.8% in 2011 and 3.7% in 2012.Previously, it had forecast expansion […]

Vague, cloudy and romantic dreams of Eurasian Weltmacht were the great curse of Germany during the 20th century.  Now that the Fifth, Berlin-based Reich has replaced the old postwar Fourth Reich headquartered in Bonn, those dreams seem to be stirring once more.  A recent article in German weekly Der Spiegel casts the humdrum Durban climate […]

Sometimes crossing an invisible borderline can get people killed. That is what happened in the latest “incident” in Asia when a Chinese skipper fatally stabbed a South Korean Coast Guard officer who was arresting him for fishing in Korean waters. AFP has the story: It was the second time in less than four years that […]

The European situation continues to worsen as embattled French President Nicolas Sarkozy begins to soften the voters up to expect the loss of France’s AAA credit rating.  From Reuters: In an interview, Sarkozy told Le Monde newspaper the loss of the AAA status — a grade that allows France to finance its debt as cheaply […]

Threats are not the way to deal with Turkey; Iran is the latest country to make this mistake.  Mustafa Akyol reports in the Turkish English language paper Daily News that an Iranian official has warned that if the US or Israel attack Iran, Iran will retaliate against missile sites in Turkey.Nothing could be better calculated […]

These should be good times in the White House.  The GOP primary process has tarnished the party brand and shows no signs of producing a strong contender for 2012.  The headline unemployment rate dropped below 9 percent last month, and the threat of a 2012 recession, barring further madness in Europe, seems to have receded.  […]

There’s been a lot of talk from Americans impressed by China’s rapid growth that the US needs to imitate China: spend money on high speed rail, put more government money behind planned industrial development, and step up our subsidies for green tech like solar and windmills.  Otherwise, they say, China will eat our lunch and […]

Last Friday I wrote that I was going to let the dust settle before giving my views on the results of the EU summit.  Too much was happening too quickly to make sense of it all and I wanted to let the news simmer a while before taking a view.And there was something else at […]

The good news about future US energy supplies just keeps coming.  In today’s Wall Street Journal Daniel Yergin, easily the country’s most thoughtful energy student, projects that US oil production is headed to grow by another 2 million barrels a day by 2020 — an increase of more than 50 percent in our current oil […]

The oldest purpose built house of African American Christian worship in the United States is the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill in Boston.  Built by African American craftsmen in the early 19th century, the three story building opened for worship in 1806.  During the struggle against slavery, it was a place where abolitionists and […]