Over at The Atlantic David A. Graham has put together an excellent guide to the policy debates that are making North Carolina one of the most interesting and important political experiments taking place in America today. The state, which only four years after voting for Barack Obama elected a GOP Governor and Republican-controlled legislature last fall, is […]

Shale gas isn’t just good for America, it’s good for North America. A new report from the Boston Consulting Group suggests that cheap American shale gas is going to power a Mexican manufacturing boom (h/t Matt Yglesias): Within five years, higher manufacturing exports due to a widening cost advantage over China and other major economies could add $20 […]

One of China’s biggest manufacturers of wind turbines is shutting down its subsidiaries in Italy, Canada, the US, and Belgium. Sinovel has gone through two CEOs, layoffs, court battles over alleged theft of a US company’s software, and internal restructuring—all in the past year.Sinovel is hoping to turn its fortunes around by shuttering these four […]

Boys are being penalized in schools simply for exhibiting traits characteristic of their gender. So writes teacher Jessica Lahey in The Atlantic, who claims that her colleagues are failing to understand and engage boys in the classroom: Something is rotten in the state of boys’ education, and I can’t help but suspect that the pattern […]

Johns Hopkins Medical is partnering with Walgreens to create a new branch of the chain with healthier food and an amped-up health care clinic. The two groups will use the store to experiment with new ways of delivering medical care cheaply to local patients. The Baltimore Sun: “We see this as a sort of lab,” said Dr. Jay […]

Pennsylvania, which has the eighth-worst pension system in the country, is following Illinois (#1) by punting on reform. The budget passed by the legislature on Sunday does nothing for pensions; a fix will now have to wait for the fall session.The parallels with Illinois are striking. In both states, pension liabilities are higher than total annual revenues […]

The sleuths in charge of Turkey’s governing AK Party have been trying to figure out what sinister forces are responsible for the unrest in their country. Clearly, their own policies cannot be responsible; that must be obvious to a child. There must then be some hidden hand, some evil conspiracy leading people astray. Prime Minister […]

An Jung-geun is a national hero in South Korea. In 1909, at the dawn of Japan’s 35-year brutal colonial rule over the Korean peninsula, he killed former Japanese Prime Minister and then-Resident General of Korea Ito Hirobumi at Harbin Train Station in Heilongjiang province, China. He later wrote out 15 reasons why Ito Hirobumi deserved death, including […]

Britain’s National Health Service has had a pretty dismal track record lately. Earlier this year, we learned of truly abhorrent conditions at one UK hospital, followed quickly by another report revealing that a number of hospitals have been systematically covering up abuses. Now we hear that a fifth of all NHS employees have been the victim of bullying by […]

Several high ranking Muslim Brotherhood officials have resigned from the Egyptian government on the heels of yesterday’s army-issued ultimatum, culminating most recently in the Foreign Minister reportedly stepping down. Morsi himself has remained defiant, but his ability to stay in control looks shakier by the minute.How will this all end? With fast-changing situations like this, […]