For all our policy differences, there are a few economic ideas that liberals and conservatives can usually agree on. For example, we all tend to believe that lower prices are good. Everyone loves a sale, whether it’s on iPods or red delicious apples. So Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria is on the right track in […]
Amid the lawless bloodbath that is Somalia, the northern state of Somaliland remains a rare example of functioning democracy in the Muslim world. Unlike the rest of Somalia, Somaliland has maintained relative stability and peace despite occasional border conflicts with the semi-autonomous Somali province of Puntland. Since its unilateral referendum on independence in 2001, Somaliland […]
Last year, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that America’s public school teachers are “desperately underpaid” and called for a doubling of teachers’ wages. A similar theme is touted frequently by politicians, media, and education unions. But teacher compensation is much more than salary. The plush benefits given to public school employees are a […]
On June 28, during a press briefing by the Chinese Ministry of Defense, Chinese military press spokesman Senior Colonel Geng Yansheng released a bombshell. Asked by an unnamed correspondent about China’s response to Vietnamese air force patrols near the Spratly Islands, Geng made the usual declaration about China’s claims to indisputable sovereignty over the Spratlys […]
In a ruling last week, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia largely sided with the Association of Private Colleges and Universities, which had sued the U.S. Department of Education and Education Secretary Arne Duncan alleging that rules promulgated by the Secretary unfairly discriminate against for-profit institutions. For-profit colleges have become a popular […]
Four days after Mexico’s presidential and national elections, Mexico’s independent electoral institute ordered a swift recount of votes cast in 78,012 of its 143,132 polling stations. It swiftly confirmed that the candidate of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), Enrique Peña Nieto, scored a 6.6 percentage point advantage over the candidate of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary […]
Various Syrian opposition groups met in Cairo this week to sketch out a draft of a potential constitution and lay out the steps of a political transition, but they could not agree on the more basic and concrete issues of whether to support armed resistance to the regime or call for Assad’s removal. The Kurdish […]
After a quiet afternoon Thursday, the third day of the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty conference closed with a bang. The conference president, Ambassador Roberto Garcia Moritán, again tried to persuade the delegates to accept his proposal that, on Friday, they split into two working groups, one to consider the treaty’s scope and implementation and the […]
The Department of Energy recently awarded $25 million to a French company that posted net losses of about $70 million last year, and whose solar division is particularly troubled financially. As part of its Scaling Up Nascent PV At Home (SUNPATH) project, DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) division announced three awards in June […]
After the Palestinian fireworks of the first two days, the third day of the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty conference started slowly, with a series of national statements. None was without interest. What comes through loud and clear is that what the African nations, in particular, want is a treaty that will give them lots of […]
