Texas Governor Rick Perry has taken the fight for new jobs straight to California’s airwaves. The Lone Star governor is out with a 30-second advertisement on radio channels across California’s major media markets: “Building a business is tough,” says the governor in his Texas twang, “but I hear building a business in California is next […]

It’s official: “China is extremely concerned by the way things are going [in North Korea],” said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman today. “We oppose any behavior which may exacerbate the situation and any acts which are not beneficial towards the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”The Communist Party-run Global Times editorial today shows how Chinese nationalists are […]

A confidential legal review has just decided that the President should have broad power to issue preemptive cyber attacks, says the NYT.This review comes at a time when the pace of attacks on sensitive computer systems has picked up. The Energy Department, two American power stations, the NYT, the WSJ, and Washington Post have all been recent […]

It’s finally happening: The U.S. Postal Service is expected to announce a new plan to cut Saturday mail delivery by August, reports the NYT.These plans have been floated by the USPS for some time now as a solution to the agency’s chronic financial woes, but nothing has happened yet because of the need for congressional approval for such a move. Thus […]

Like many others, Via Meadia welcomes the development of MOOCs (massive open online courses) like those offered by Coursera and EdX. But there’s a problem: we’ve noticed that many of online ed’s biggest boosters have often never experienced an online class for themselves and so tend to overlook some serious problems in the platforms that are out […]

The most unpopular governor in the country, Illinois’s Pat Quinn, will stand up to give the State of the State speech this evening, and he won’t be bearing good news. Due mostly to a crisis of unfunded pensions, Illinois has the worst credit outlook in the country, having been downgraded a dozen times by credit agencies […]

Is rampant street violence coming to Tunisia too? Could be, as opposition leader Chokri Belaid was shot and killed in front of his home in Tunis today. An outspoken critic of the  Islamist party Ennahda, which is widely considered moderate but has at times been indulgent of the radical Salafis, Belaid had received several death […]

January 22, 2013 was the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision by the Supreme Court which declared that abortion was a woman’s constitutional right. The occasion, as every year on that date, was observed by the annual March for Life in which many thousands converge on Washington to protest the legalization of […]

Argentina is already in trouble with the IMF for playing fast and loose with economic statistics. Now President Kirchner has put a two-month price freeze on all products sold in Argentina’s major supermarkets in an attempt to slow down the inflation her government claims isn’t serious. It’s the kind of move rattled Argentinian governments traditionally make as […]

Finding a penny for good luck will soon prove difficult in Canada: the Royal Mint officially stopped distributing the coin on Monday. All prices will now be rounded to the nearest nickel. The BBC reports: The Canadian penny is being withdrawn from circulation because production costs have exceeded its monetary value. […]The government has estimated that the […]