As the day dawns on Boston after yesterday’s barbaric, tragic bombing, Iraq too is recovering from a particularly bloody day. The New York Times has the story: In the latest surge of violence, more than 20 attacks around the country on Monday killed close to 50 people and wounded nearly 200. Two schools in Hilla […]

Since yesterday afternoon, Americans have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. We know we’ve been attacked by someone deranged, hate-filled and cowardly, but we don’t know much more than that.The police seem to be following some leads, but either because no one is claiming responsibility or because so many are claiming responsibility we […]

What does it mean for the euro that, on paper at least, Spaniards, Italians, and Cypriots are much wealthier on average than Germans? That’s the question Wolfgang Münchau tackled in a must-read column in the Financial Times, and it’s one that VM readers would do well to spend some time thinking through.Here are the outlines of his […]

How unfair is Social Security going to be on the coming generations? Here’s a report being highlighted by CNN that’s worth looking at: A couple who each earned the average wage during their careers and retired in 1990 would have paid $316,000 in Social Security taxes, but collected $436,000 in benefits, according to data crunched by Eugene […]

New York has just become one of the first states to introduce standardized testing that accords with the Common Core curriculum, a set of state-developed national standards and academic guidelines. The curriculum has been adopted by nearly every state, but the associated tests have not. The New York Times reports on the roll-out in New York: New York […]

Delegates at the California Democratic Party convention overwhelmingly passed a resolution yesterday censuring fellow party members who support school reform and calling groups like Democrats for School Reform a front for Republican and corporate interests. “Let’s be perfectly clear”, the President of the California Teachers Association explained, These organizations are backed by moneyed interests, Republican operatives […]

Have a long commute? You’re more likely to gain weight and die early than your teleworking counterparts. A Swedish social geographer found that those who travel more than 31 miles to work are more likely to die young. For reference, the average commute distance in the US is 25 miles each way. That’s not good. […]

Nepal, a country sandwiched high in the Himalayas between China and India, has historically tilted toward India in regional politics. Ethnic and cultural similarities pull the two countries together, and visitors from one country can cross freely into the next without a passport. For a long time, India has also provided Nepal, one of the poorest […]

A new webchat service hopes to keep scattered teleworking employees talking. Sqwiggle is trying to hit the sweet spot between always-on chatrooms and video chat software like Skype. Techcrunch reports: Each company gets their own “Workroom”, with each member getting a spot in a Brady Bunch-esque grid of heads. When you’re not actively in a conversation […]

This weekend, Hugo Chavez’s chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, won Venezuela’s first election since Chavez’s death—just barely. As Reuters reports, Maduro won with 50.7 percent of the vote over Henrique Capriles’ 49.1 percent, a difference of just 235,000 votes in an election where almost 14.8 million ballots were cast.Maduro, a young and far less charismatic leader than […]