As the death toll from Sunday’s deadly suicide blasts at All Saints Church in Peshawar rises to 83, Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, is coming under increasing criticism. After the parliamentary elections this past May, his party, the PTI (Movement for Justice) is now the third largest in Pakistan and the biggest in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, of […]

As the home of the three largest MOOC companies (Coursera, Udacity, and EdX), America remains the undisputed leader of the fledging industry. But the rest of the world will surely try to catch up. Several Asian universities have flirted with creating their own programs, and it wouldn’t surprise us to find that schools in the […]

Puerto Rico’s debt crisis has just been moved up to DEFCON 1. The WSJ reports that a number of financial firms are taking the radical step of limiting investor access to the island’s debt and warning smaller brokers to stay away. As the Journal notes, this is an extreme measure that is rarely ever used. The fact that […]

President Putin’s point man for bringing Ukraine to heel is really yanking on the choke chain these days, threatening to support the dismemberment of Russia’s neighbor if it votes to move closer to the EU. The Times of London has the eyebrow-raising scoop: Sergei Glazyev, one of Vladimir Putin’s top advisers, said that Ukraine’s Russian-speaking minority might […]

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a letter to the editor extolling the virtues of telework, as well as a host of responses it prompted. Many readers chimed in with positive anecdotes, but there was also plenty of criticism. One reader made a well-worn managerial complaint: [I]t’s difficult for an employer to ascertain the productivity […]

Government rationing, price controls, and seizures of private companies have made Venezuela’s economy the envy of the world, which is why no one’s concerned about the government takeover of a toilet paper factory. The Venezuelan National Guard has occupied the factory, of course, simply to keep “unscrupulous traders” from perpetuating the country’s chronic TP shortage. […]

The EPA unfurled a new rule last Friday limiting emissions at new American coal plants to just 60 percent of what they currently spout. E&E News reports: The rule would limit new coal plants to emitting 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. A typical coal plant today emits 1,800 pounds of CO2 per MWh. New gas […]

Will public-sector pensions follow their private-sector counterparts into relative obscurity? Robert Lowenstein raises this question in a new piece at the Wall Street Journal, drawing parallels between the growth and decline of pensions in private companies in the mid-20th century with the pension crisis currently afflicting cities like Detroit and Stockton. The problems are best illustrated […]

Here are three facts about the Lone Star State, as reported by Policymic. Texas is creating more jobs than any other state in the country; the government sector has shrunk more than any other sector; and perhaps most impressive of all, unemployment is falling even though participation in the labor force is growing: Since August 2012, Texas’ employers […]

The New York Times has some good news and some bad news for Obamacare. The good news is that, as many had predicted, health insurance costs will indeed be lower than initially projected (although this does not mean that they will be lower than they are now). The bad news is that many insurers are achieving this […]