Moody’s, the credit rating agency, is setting itself up as an unlikely arbiter of massively open online courseware. A report from Moody’s Investors Service makes bullish predictions for schools that are early adopters of MOOCs, noting that successful programs will allow schools to spread their brand globally, potentially opening them up to a much wider range […]

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 […]

Dear readers,I am away on travel this week. Posting will resume again next week as usual.— Peter Berger

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 […]