- An American in Paris: two exceptional posts from Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates about his experiences in France. The piece on the cultural power of English is particularly good.
- Why was an Australian initiative to secure dangerous radioactive materials around our region cancelled?
- India will launch its first indigenous aircraft carrier next week. More images here.
- TIME magazine's 25 best bloggers of 2013. I particularly like World War 2 Today, reporting the war one day at a time.
- New research on the link between free trade and inequality.
- Floating embassies: the cruise industry, born in the 1950s, had an explicit affinity with 'one-world' liberal idealism, and you can still see vestiges of it today.
- So what does the test-tube beef burger that could change the face of world agriculture actually taste like?
