Unions are starting to make a serious push into a segment of the education system from which they have been heretofore largely absent: charter schools. In mid-April we noted that the American Federation of Teachers was planning to organize employees of the United Neighborhood Organization, which runs 13 charter schools in Chicago. The vote has […]

Japan is on the verge of restarting a nuclear processing facility that could push angry neighboring countries into an arms race, the WSJ reported last night. The Rokkasho facility, in Japan’s northern Aomori prefecture, is purely civilian in nature, Japan’s leaders assert. But it is capable of producing nine tons of weapons-grade plutonium each year, enough for 2,000 […]

President Obama is in Mexico today, above all else to deepen economic ties. Mexico has come very far in a relatively short amount of time, and President Enrique Peña Nieto will greet President Obama with the reputation of a capable reformist determined to turn Mexico into the prosperous North American power it has long sought […]

Is Egypt on the brink of an even bigger catastrophe than has already befallen it? The FT has a story this morning about the unprecedented crime rates plaguing Egyptians of all walks of life: armed robberies are up twelvefold, car thefts are up fourfold, and homicides have tripled. The roots of the criminality are complex: […]

We commented before on Uber, the app that lets users quickly and easily hail cabs. After almost a year of delay, the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission finally agreed on Tuesday to start a pilot program for the app. Now the NYT reports that, on Wednesday, a judge from the appeals court issued an injunction that will once again […]

AirBnB, an app that allows people to rent out their homes, has recently announced that it will vet all potential renters to determine if they’re being honest about who they are. Pivoting off this announcement, a piece in the FT looks at the increasing push for identity verification online: It took Facebook to change everything. Suddenly it […]

College grads and young families, take note: the best place to start your life might be in a state you least expect. Those looking to start a business or launch a career might want to consult the Enterprise State Dashboard, a data survey put together by the US Chamber of Commerce. The interactive report ranks […]

Anecdotal observation tells us that working mothers often drop their careers when their work hours become too demanding. This theory has now been confirmed by a study led by Youngjoo Cha, an assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University. Her research found that once average working hours exceed 50 hours a week, women with children […]

Argentines are now paying over nine pesos for every dollar on the country’s currency black market. La Nacion reports that rampant peso inflation and tight controls on the US dollar are pushing prices up on the “blue dollar” higher than it’s ever been. In this graph from the story, the red line is the price of the […]

A number of universities have been integrating online coursework into their programs in recent years. But Duke University has just pulled out of an online education consortium at the behest of its faculty, the New York Times reports: While [Duke provost Peter] Lange saw the consortium as expanding the courses available to Duke students, some […]