How bad is California’s public employee compensation problem? If nurses collecting $1 million in overtime pay and highway patrol officers making $500,000 are any indication, “bad” doesn’t cover the half of it. From Bloomberg (the first in a five-part series): In California, Governor Jerry Brown hasn’t curbed overtime expenses that lead the 12 largest states […]

Don’t let the Swedish sexism police catch you giving trucks to little boys for Christmas. Sweden’s fearless regulators are taking on toy companies for assuming that boys like cars and Nerf guns while girls prefer dolls and tea sets. The Atlantic has the story: The Reklamombudsmannen (RO) has reprimanded Top-Toy, a licensee of Toys”R”Us and […]

In October we reported that Florida Governor Rick Scott was mulling a plan to charge lower tuition rates for state university students pursuing degrees in science, tech, engineering and math. This would give students added incentive to choose a major with higher earning potential, potentially giving the state not only more tax revenue but also more […]

Mali is falling apart faster than anyone can figure out how to fix it.Hours after being arrested by the same soldiers who had led a coup in March, Mali’s prime minister announced his resignation on state television. He had been in office for just eight months.Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra’s enemies evidently decided they had […]

How many billions are U.S. taxpayers willing to give Islamist regimes in the Middle East, both directly and through international organizations? The Obama administration is likely to find out. The Washington Post reports: The United States and a coalition of international lenders are pushing ahead with billions of dollars in loans and other help for […]

What does failure in Afghanistan look like? A new Pentagon report is damning for the Obama administration: only one of the 23 Afghan army brigades is able to operate without Western support, the country as a whole is more violent than before the surge, and attacks on coalition forces by supposedly friendly Afghan partners are […]

The Internet will stay free and open for one more day, as a Russian-led proposal to regulate it collapsed yesterday at talks in Dubai. The talks, at a meeting of the International Telecommunications Union, have been ongoing for a week. Stiff resistance to the Russian plans (also backed by China and several autocratic Arab and African […]

Canada made some big moves in the energy market last week. On Friday, Ottawa approved a takeover of Canda’s Nexen by China’s CNOOC, one of the country’s largest oil companies. This $15.1 billion takeover is China’s biggest foreign acquisition and will give it a major interest in the North American energy boom. The WSJ: The deal approvals […]

The higher ed revolution is coming. Just a few decades hence, half the colleges and universities in the United States will have disappeared, but schools like Harvard will have millions of students.

One of India’s most popular and controversial politicians, Narendra Modi, is set to win re-election in the booming coastal state of Gujarat this week. But the elections in his home state, which accounts for only 5 percent of India’s population but 22 percent of its exports, are seen by many as merely the semi-finals for […]