The CKM matrix and CP violation (in the continuum approximation)

The first part of this talk reviews recent developments in flavor physics that can be made without detailed understanding of hadronic physics, driven by the data. The error of sin(2beta) has shrunk below 5%, and the measurements of alpha and gamma have reached interesting precisions. For the first time, there are significant constraints on the deviations from the standard model in B-Bbar mixing and in b->s and b->d transitions. In the second part, I review some theoretical developments for exclusive semileptonic and nonleptonic B decays that have become possible using the soft-collinear effective theory. I concentrate on topics where the recent progress has model independent implications for interpreting the data.