America’s trillion-dollar student debt burden is killing small business creation, according to Bloomberg. From 2005 to 2010 self-employment for those 25 and younger fell by 19 percent; 23 percent of respondents to one survey stated that debt problems had put their small business plans on hold. The Bloomberg story discusses the case of Dr. Steve Sherick, who’s […]

The Guardian scored a major scoop today by revealing that the Obama administration secretly ordered Verizon to turn over all records of phone calls made through its Business Network Services division. In effect, this means that the call logs, which include information on numbers dialed, the length of calls and the locations (but not the content of […]

Lithuania is the latest European country to wriggle out of the grip of Russia’s state-owned gas behemoth Gazprom. The Russian energy giant has a 37 percent stake in Lithuania’s national gas utility, but the former Soviet state is taking advantage of a new EU rule to restructure this arrangement and nationalize its pipelines.The EU requires […]

Disapproval of Obamacare has hit a new high at perhaps the worst possible time. WSJ reports that 49 percent of Americans now believe the ACA was a “bad idea,” compared to almost 40 percent in 2011. Even more interesting, 43 percent of Americans hold “strongly” to their opposition to the law, which is an unusually low margin between […]

The “big news” in U.S. foreign policy today, of course, is what is being called the personnel shakeup: Tom Donilon out as NSC Advisor, Susan Rice in from her UN post, and Samantha Power from the NSC staff to Turtle Bay. This is the kind of story the mainstream press can’t get enough of, because […]

China’s enthusiasm for computerized mayhem isn’t restricted to the virtual. Earlier this week, a Russian IT security firm released a report naming “Red Star” as a China-based hacking crew suspected to have ties to official Beijing (though no links are proven yet). The group has taken advantage of faults in Microsoft Office software to spread NetTraveler, […]

The nationalist, party-owned newspaper Global Times recently launched an online video game called “Recover the Diayou Islands” that allows players to fight against Japanese ships and planes and invade Japanese territory. (You can play the game here.)Dramatic music plays in the background. “The Chinese nation’s determination to protect the Diaoyu Islands is unwavering!” reads the game’s introduction, according […]

When commended for being a “pillar of the Church,” Winston Churchill supposedly once replied that he was “not a pillar of the Church but a flying buttress, supporting it from the outside.” There are more and more Americans taking this Churchillian approach to religion. A new Gallup poll found that 75 percent of Americans believe […]

The “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) law may soon be left behind itself. One of the perennial criticisms of Bush’s signature education reform is that it is too rigid and incentivizes teachers to “teach to the test” rather than tailor their curriculum towards the individual needs of students.Senator Tom Harkin has just proposed a bill […]

On May 29 thousands gathered on the shores of the Golden Horn in the historic neighborhood of Balat to celebrate the 560th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. It was the kind of early summer Istanbul evening that gives a slight taste of the thick humidity to come in June and July. The city’s […]