A child rides on a swing at a park in New Delhi on April 15, 2012. Sex selection of foetuses in India has led to 7.1 million fewer girls than boys up to age six, a gender gap that has widened by more than a million in a decade, according to a study released in 2011.
Valerie M. Hudson is professor and George H.W. Bush chair in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
In the academic field of security studies, realpolitik dominates. Those who adhere to this worldview are committed to accepting empirical evidence when it is placed before their eyes, to see the world as it "really" is and not as it ideally should be. As Walter Lippmann wrote, "We must not substitute for the world as it is an imaginary world."
When Violet (Emily Blunt) is accepted to a postdoctoral program at the University of Michigan, she and her fiance, Tom (Jason Segel), postpone their wedding plans — along with Tom's career as a chef — and move from San Francisco to Ann Arbor.
Credit Universal Pictures
Tom makes the best of the relocation by making unlikely friends like Tarquin (Brian Posehn) and trying to find work as a chef — while in the meantime putting in time at Ann Arbor's famed Zingerman's Deli.
We start where most movies end: A happy city-slicker couple pledge to spend the rest of their lives together, as a famous American landmark twinkles behind them.
From then on, Nicholas Stoller's weird, endearingly messy The Five-Year Engagement embarks on an uncharted circular voyage. Its two wistful, determined leads — Emily Blunt as grad student Violet and Jason Segel as sous-chef Tom — are caught in a Sisyphean premarital loop.
Socialist candidate for the 2012 French presidential election, Francois Hollande, speaks at his campaign headquarters in Paris on Jan. 14, 2012. Hollande is facing current French president Nicolas Sarkozy in a run off election.
France's incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives on stage to deliver a speech during a campaign meeting in Cernay, eastern France, on April 25, 2012. Sarkozy will face his rival Socialist Party Francois Hollande in a final round on May 6, 2012.
The U.S. economy hit the recession exit ramp nearly three years ago, but it's been lost on the back roads somewhere near Recoveryville ever since.
Growth rates have been modest at best compared with the 4-plus percent growth in the years well before the U.S. began slouching toward its worst post-World War II recession.
