The venture capital firm behind some of the most prominent recent green tech flops, led by major Dem donors and advised by Al Gore, is in big trouble as the green bubble bursts and one highly touted green investment after another goes belly up. A good, in-depth article in NYT Dealbook shows how Kleiner Perkins, the firm […]

Two stories today (h/t OpenEurope) point to the realities of political life in the EU in these trying times.First up is the news that Silvio Berlusconi has lost his appeal over tax evasion charges in Italy. This long-running saga could stretch out even further; Berlusconi could appeal one more time, during which time the statute […]

The federal government has just released new data about Medicare reimbursement rates showing that the price of treatments vary widely from hospital to hospital. The data, drawn from 3,300 hospitals across the country, looked at how much each facility charged for the hundred most common treatments.The variations in price were incredible. For example, two different […]

We’ve already seen how American men are falling behind in college education and how the evaporation of industries geared toward male workers has left many men unemployed. But the problems aren’t limited to the United States. The UK’s Guardian compiled statistics that show how British men are struggling in a six other areas: prison sentencing, employment, education, homelessness, […]

Rumors of another massacre in northern Nigeria are filtering out of the country, and they don’t sound pretty. About 200 Boko Haram militants apparently laid siege to the town of Bama yesterday, attacked an army barracks and a prison, freed scores of prisoners and killed almost two dozen military personnel.In a separate but equally grisly […]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is having second thoughts about recanting his country’s apology for crimes committed in World War Two. Abe recently suggested that Japan might not have been the aggressor during the war due to the fact that “invasion” is a subjective term. Fortunately, saner voices have prevailed in the Prime Minister’s office. […]

You probably didn’t know that yet another round of international climate negotiations was going on last week in Germany. Don’t feel bad, we were just as ignorant. Fortunately, you didn’t miss much: The conference in Bonn ended without any commitments.This is what we’ve come to expect, given the international community’s track record at these grand climate […]

Nearly all the votes are in from the southern Indian state Karnataka’s legislative assembly election over the weekend, and it looks like the Congress Party won big. Congress, the national ruling party, of Jawaharlal Nehru, of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, and now of Rajiv’s son Rahul, took 121 seats, over the BJP’s 40, out of a […]

American city dwellers are flocking to the sidewalks for the fast, delicious food to be found in food trucks. Not surprisingly, city regulators and bureaucracies have been slow to catch up with these rolling kitchens, leading to all kinds of headaches for these small business owners.The problems in New York City are particularly bad. Food […]

The WTO has just selected a new leader amid one of the gravest crises since its founding. The race had been narrowed to two candidates, Roberto Azevedo of Brazil and Herminio Blanco of Mexico. Both are widely respected figures from Latin Ameria, but much has been made of the fact that Blanco enjoyed the backing […]