Online education has made astonishing strides in recent months. In the past year alone, projects like EdX, Udacity and Coursera have gone from hypotheticals to live programs. But the latter appears to be pulling ahead of its competitors: How is [Coursera] growing so fast? By leaving all the labor-intensive parts of online education—the teaching, the curriculum […]

A manufacturing revolution is underway in Mexico, the FT reports: For the first time in a decade, Latin America’s second-largest economy has become a credible competitor to China.During the first half of this year, Mexico accounted for 14.2 per cent of manufactured imports into the US, the world’s largest importer. In 2005, Mexico’s share was […]

The powers-that-be in the U.S. Postal Service have come up with a genius plan to keep the system afloat: Bury us in junk mail. Facing a decline in normal mail volume, post offices are looking to convince businesses to flood our mailboxes. The New York Times reports: Faced with multibillion-dollar losses and significant declines in […]

Is Burma the next Asian Tiger? Jared Bissinger, writing at Foreign Policy, doesn’t think so. He lists seven myths about Burma’s economy and the recent reforms, concluding that all is not as rosy as the Burmese government and more than a few international businessmen might lead you to believe: The economies of the Asian Tigers don’t look […]

Chicago’s teachers weren’t the only ones to end a strike this week: South Africa’s six-week mine protest finally came to an end on Tuesday when a group of protesting miners were promised a pay raise. And much like in America, the resolution of these strikes gives an embattled president new hope for reelection.Unfortunately, this isn’t […]

The strike may be over, but the problems for Chicago’s teachers are only beginning. The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund will go bankrupt in a few years if nothing is done. The New York Times reports: The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund has about $10 billion in assets, but is paying out more than $1 billion in benefits a […]

At the beginning of the euro crisis, many predicted Europe would be pushed into a closer union. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening: Europe is slowly fragmenting into a two-tiered structure with a safe, reliable core and a dangerous, floundering periphery. As depositors rush to withdraw their money from peripheral banks and put it […]

A French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, has published new cartoons featuring (what else?) depictions of the prophet Muhammad. Fearing violence at its embassies in the Muslim world, France has decided to preemptively close them. The Financial Times has more: Jean-Marc Ayrault, the prime minister, affirmed the right to freedom of expression but pointedly added his “disapproval […]

In Syria this week, witnesses reported that the Syrian army tested chemical weapons as recently as last month. Der Spiegel has the details: The tests took place near a chemical weapons research center at Safira east of Aleppo, witnesses told SPIEGEL. A total of five or six empty shells devised for delivering chemical agents were fired […]

If 2010 was the year of austerity, then 2012 may be remembered as the year of stimulus. The Fed made a major splash last week when it announced a nearly unlimited bond-buying program that is scheduled to continue well after unemployment falls. Earlier this month, the ECB announced a similar plan to tackle the issue of sovereign debt in […]