UPDATE: Somehow, a rough draft got posted. Below is the official LT#3

Cities:

[C1] Lyman Stone says that, contrary to what you may have heard about urban and rural revivals, they don’t seem to be happening.

[C2] Allastair Bonnett has written a book about ghost cities and secret cities that sounds quite interesting.

[C3] Were cities undone by the loss of hometown banks?

[C4] Aaron Renn praises the boring city, which he argues is mostly code for “stuff I don’t like.”

[C5] Joel Kotkin writes about The Battle of the Upstarts, the Bay Areas of Texas (Houston) and California (San Francisco), and their very different models for recent success.

[C6] Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan looks at the sad fates of the world’s tallest unfinished buildings.

Europe:

[E1] The Spanish government demanded that Google pay news services for their linkage and excerpts. Google News left, and now Spanish newspapers want to revise the policy.

[E2] Britain is expanding the definition of child abuse. Widely. As skeptical as I sometimes am of our own system, I can always say “At least we’re not Britain.”

[E3] What’s up with the electrical field outside Google’s London office?

[E4] Sweden has a lot of the laws (and culture) that people here say we need to help women in the workplace, and the result isn’t all that different than here. Ditto Norway.

[E5] Is science in Europe going in the wrong direction?

[E6] Eurozone membership isn’t free.

Russia:

[R1] Don’t expect Russian oligarchs to come to Russia’s aid, because according to Masha Gessen, there aren’t any.

[R2] A sign of the times: When a German MP who is a critic of Russia dies of a heart attack, they feel the need to perform an autopsy. (Nothing untoward was discovered.)

[R3] Russia: Depopulation by low birth rates and high death ones. Or not.

[R4] Amit Singh looks at the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and asks what about Hawaii? I find the comparison lacking, but do believe that of all our various states, Hawaii should get a more full hearing.

Asia:

[A1] I was asking Nob about this just a few weeks ago. As Shinzo Abe sails to re-election despite a faltering economy, where are the other parties? Incidentally, I feel pretty vindicated in my comments on this OTB thread regarding the ability of parliamentary systems in allowing prime ministers to call snap elections.

[A2] Vulture wonders how North Korean films portray Americans.

[A3] Before our movie studios started nixing anything with North Korea as the bad guys, it made North Korea the villain to avoid antagonizing the Chinese.

[A4] India has a lot of universities, so another one opening isn’t a big deal. Except that it’s re-opening the world’s oldest.

[A5] South Korea takes its university exams very, very seriously.

[A6] In order to smooth relations with the Uighurs (an ethnic minority group covering the northwest), China is offering money for ethnic-majority Chinese to marry them.

Middle East:

[M1] Charles Hill introduces readers to Batman, Turkey.

[M2] Israel gets a lot of criticism for searching pregnant Palenstinian women, but they have a reason to do so.

[M3] A couple of sales later, a Texas plumber’s Ford F-250 pickup ended up fighting in a war in Syria. {Fun comments here}

[M4] Masdar City is Abu Dhabi’s own (green!) ghost town!

USA:

[U1] So apparently there is a thing where American Jews commonly eat Chinese food on Christmas. Adam Chandler explores the phenomenon.

[U2] How a police cruiser dashboard camera saved a man from prison and put some cops in hot water.

[U3] Can a wife with dementia consent to sex with her husband?

[U4] This is one free speech issue on which I side with the government. Of California, no less! I have no opinions on a law requiring porn actors to wear condoms, but it seems to me that you can prohibit things in the making of art, provided a rationale, even if you shouldn’t be able to prohibit the appearance of such things. Having someone pretend to be sixteen while having sex on camera versus putting an actual sixteen year old in porn.

[U5] Single-payer in Vermont is dead. Avik Roy and Sarah Kliff comment. Vermont was actually always a poor test case. I’d like to see it tried somewhere. I hope someone in California campaigns on it.

[U6] Unsurprisingly, I suppose, Obama’s immigration executive amnesty is very popular among the foreign-born, though less popular among native-born Hispanics.

[U7] If you want to find the Hollywood sign in LA, there are people going to great lengths to make it as difficult as possible, and they’ve enlisted Google Maps.