If you needed more proof that arithmetic-deficient politicians and dysfunctional government are largely to blame for the disastrous state of New York’s finances, Albany Democrats have just supplied it.New York’s Assembly Democrats have voted down Governor Cuomo’s pension reform plan, hammering yet another nail into the state’s financial coffin. The Assembly refused Cuomo’s suggestion to […]

With President Obama and David Cameron toasting one another in Washington and bonding at a March Madness basketball game in Ohio, the “special relationship” between the US and the UK seems to be in good shape.  But is it?Beneath all the warm-and-fuzzy, there’s a sense on the British side that the two allies are drifting […]

China is tightening the screws on Europe in the trade war over environmental regulations for airliners. Following Europe’s announcement that airline carriers–foreign carriers included—would be forced to buy expensive “carbon offsets” for planes traveling to EU member states, China responded by putting plane orders from a number of European aerospace companies on hold. This has […]

Next week, the UN Human Rights Council will meet in Geneva to vote on a resolution that calls for an independent investigation into the last months of the Sri Lankan civil war. A recent documentary, aired on Britain’s Channel 4 and titled “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields,” details the very brutal ending of that war, and […]

As David Cameron arrives in the US for a celebration of the special relationship, it’s worth noting that Britain is set to argue against its own citizens’ right to wear crosses in the European Court of Human Rights. CNN reports: Christian activists in Britain are furious at the arguments their government will use against them […]

Only in America? According to Bloomberg, hydraulic fracking, the promising work-in-progress energy technology, is running into problems outside the United States: Some shale formations in Europe and China are impervious to drilling techniques that opened vast reserves of natural gas and oil from Texas to Pennsylvania, said Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM)’s chief executive […]

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan is an improvement on previous would-be mediators in Syria (the presence of a notorious war criminal among them sets the bar pretty low). But even he has proven no more effective in quelling the conflict, according to the Washington Post: An international push to end Syria’s conflict stalled Sunday as U.N. […]

According to new reports in the Financial Times, Gordon Brown may have unwittingly dealt an irreparable blow to Britain’s financial services industry, and the full effects of this are only beginning to be felt three years later. Brown deserves a lot of credit for holding fast against Tony Blair’s eagerness to join the eurozone, but in […]

After months of relative neglect, the connection between stalled negotiations in Cyprus and Turkish-EU relations garnered considerable attention from Turkey’s domestic press this week. Turkish Minister for EU Affairs Egemen Bağış stated that “all options . . . [including] reunification” are on the table, provided that political equality of Turkish and Greek Cypriots is respected. His […]

In the burgeoning education reform movement, teacher evaluations—especially those using the “value-added” model—have become a central focus for aspiring reformers. Yet a teacher’s take in the New York Times casts serious doubt on these measures. NYC’s teacher evaluations, he says, are wildly inaccurate, with margins of error as high as a startling 57 percent. In his […]