THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: U.S. Top Destination for Christian, Buddhist Immigrants, Study Says
The U.S. is the top destination for the world's migrating Christians and Buddhists, as well as those with no particular religious affiliation, including atheists and agnostics, a new study showed. The pattern is among the revelations in a map of religious migration across the globe released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center.
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THE HUFFINGTON POST/ASSOCIATED PRESS: Abdo Husameddine, Syria Deputy Oil Minister, Defects
BEIRUT — Syria's deputy oil minister defected and posted his parting words to President Bashar Assad in a video on YouTube Thursday, calling the regime criminal and urging his colleagues to also abandon the "sinking ship."
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SALON: Washington’s New Antiwar Movement
Before they became famous — or infamous, depending on one’s perspective — for their article (later turned into a book) called “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer were best known for their prescience about the Iraq War. Right before the U.S. invasion in 2003, they called it “an unnecessary war” and said Saddam Hussein’s “nuclear ambitions — the ones that concern us most — are unlikely to be realized in his lifetime.” They even spent $38,000 to place an ad in the New York Times saying that that war would not serve America’s national interests.
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THE ATLANTIC: The Pentagon's (Preliminary, Shaky, And Hypothetical) War Plan For Syria
The military campaign would begin with U.S. warplanes jamming Syria's air-defense systems and then destroying them. With those systems out of the way, American aircraft would help create a no-fly zone to protect the country's pro-democracy protesters and a humanitarian corridor to allow them to receive food, water, and medicine. The U.S. and its allies would also decide whether to directly arm the rebels as the opposition forces made a final push to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES: Arab Spring Fails To Allay Women's Anxieties
Like many Tunisians, Maroua Ben Salah, 23, never imagined that her life and her country would change so drastically in a matter of days. On Jan. 14, 2011, President Zine el-Abdine Ben Ali fled into exile in Saudi Arabia after weeks of increasingly violent protests against his autocratic regime.
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TALKING POINTS MEMO: Progressives Petition Hoyer Against Safety Net Cuts
Progressives are escalating their campaign to warn House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer off cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as he quietly pursues significant deficit reducing legislation with members of both parties. On Thursday, they will deliver 148,000 petitions to his Capitol offices.
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THE HUFFINGTON POST: Carbon Fast 2012: Christians Give Up Carbon For Lent
With the second week of Lent coming to an end, there's one thing Christians are giving up this year that's a bit different from typical comforts like chocolate, alcohol or meat. Instead, in a move that just might benefit the earth as well as their health, thousands of Christians are giving up carbon this year, according to TreeHugger.
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