The US moved back to the top spot on a list of the best places for foreign direct investment, according to the consulting firm A.T. Kearney. In its annual survey of more than 300 executives at companies worldwide, the US narrowly beat out China, which was previously number one.Other countries on the top ten list are […]

Employers ought to be scrambling to put telework policies in place, if two new studies are to be believed. The first study, conducting by a design firm, found that the modern office—characterized by an open floor plan often filled with cubicles—makes it harder for employees to concentrate. The WSJ reports on some solutions posed by the study’s […]

Australia’s Kevin Rudd is evidently a believer in that old Klingon proverb about revenge being a dish best served cold. It is very cold in Australia, and Rudd is once again the head of the Australian Labor Party at the expense of Julia Gillard, his former protege who ousted him in 2010. Facing the prospects […]

After Nawaz Sharif secured an unprecedented third term as Prime Minister of Pakistan, it didn’t take long for him to reach out to India, promising to “progressively pursue normalcy.” Late last week the Indian foreign office said Sharif had delivered “good signals” thus far into his term. Yet many Indians and Western analysts question whether […]

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who stepped down in 2010, just told a Hong Kong television station that the Senkaku Islands belong to China.“Hatoyama said it was unavoidable that China would state that Japan stole the uninhabited islets in the East China Sea,” reports the Japan Times. “Hatoyama said he thinks the Senkakus are implied in […]

Obama threw his green supporters a bone today with his new climate action plan, outlined in a speech at Georgetown and available to read here. His speech was pretty dull, as these things usually are, so we’ve done you the favor of pulling out the most interesting bits. Here’s what you need to know.We hoped […]

A new study on education outcomes has just weakened one of the key talking points for charter school opponents. Four years ago, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (Credo) compared charter students to those at regular public schools and found that charter school students often performed worse than their public school counterparts. The study’s results […]

The law crisis is now engulfing even the top firms. New York-based Weil, Gotshal & Manges, which has GE as a client and managed the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, has fired 60 associates and 110 non-lawyers. It has also reduced the pay for 30 partners. In a firm wide email, management cited the mass firings as a response […]

What should be the Federer vs. Nadal of state-level competition has become a lopsided trouncing: Texas has humiliated its opponent in straight sets. The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis is out with its state-by-state economic growth numbers for 2012, and Texas is dancing the two-step all over California’s “recovery.” The Hill reports: California’s economy shrank […]

America’s energy infrastructure is finally starting to catch up with the shale boom. Seven new oil pipeline projects are in the works in Texas, part of a badly-needed shoring-up of the Midwest’s oil supply chain.The shale boom came out of nowhere, and though the new addition of oil and gas to America’s energy mix was certainly […]