Canyon Lake, a small gated city in Southern California, has just announced plans to withdraw from Calpers. The move comes in response to the pension fund’s recent suggestion that cities kick in as much as 50 percent more to the fund to keep benefits secure. Calpers requires a “termination fee” for any municipality looking to exit, […]

The battery of the future will be measured in millimeters and recharged in seconds. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have designed a new lithium-ion battery that’s 2,000 times more powerful than current storage technology and can be recharged 1,000 times quicker: The batteries owe their high performance to their internal three-dimensional microstructure. Batteries […]

Perversely, China accused Japan today of escalating tension in the East China Sea by scrambling fighter jets every time Chinese aircraft or ships violate Japan’s territory. Japan announced yesterday that it had sent its own planes to intercept Chinese aircraft a record 306 times in the year ending March 31, double the number of times in the previous […]

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) is now warning that the Affordable Care Act, much of which he helped write, is heading for a “huge train-wreck.” At a Senate hearing yesterday, Baucus took HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to task for the botched implementation of the ACA. In particular, he argued that the insurance exchanges consumers will use to buy […]

The mainstream media is shocked and bewildered today at how spectacularly each of the President’s gun control proposals flopped in the Senate. After weeks of a full court press by the media and countless speeches by the President, there were more votes in the Senate yesterday to gut gun control than to tighten it; a proposal […]

In one of the more bizarre events to befall Pakistan’s election season, Pervez Musharraf, the former military dictator, fled the Islamabad High Court building today after a judge ordered him arrested for treason. Musharraf and his security detail literally hustled out of court and, as numerous police watched, jumped in a black SUV and fled.Musharraf had been […]

Chinese investment in clean energy jumped twenty percent last year, helping the world’s biggest producer and consumer of energy to vault past the US as the world’s top investor in clean tech, according to a new report by Pew Charitable Trusts: In 2012, China advanced its position as the epicenter of clean energy finance, attracting $65.1 […]

If the golden beaches and high quality of life aren’t enough, the cost of health care should be enough to tempt boomers to retire abroad. Kathleen Peddicord’s piece on medical tourism and health care for expat retirees offers one anecdote in particular that illustrates the comparative cheapness of foreign services: My friend, Lee Harrison, has been retired outside the […]

Reports touting the bottom-line benefits of telework keep rolling in. Earlier this month we reported on a study that found a correlation between revenue growth and telework in small businesses. Now, the WSJ is reporting on a new study that finds a similar correlation for medium-sized firms as well: Businesses that allowed employees to work remotely at least three […]

Government reports, private analysts and the media all see trouble ahead for pension plans; now the IMF is joining the chorus. The organization’s new Global Financial Stability Report warns that public pension funds, along with life insurance companies, have been loading up on dangerous investments that have left them vulnerable to collapse.The IMF report adds an […]