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The investigation into the airstrike by the U.S. on a Pakistani border position inside Afghanistan largely upholds the Pakistani account of events according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Jens Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, takes over from Anders Rasmussen of Denmark as head of the NATO defense organization. As prime minister Stoltenberg actively contributed to the NATO effort in Libya.

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Wallsten describes the tense and now frayed relationship between Obama and immigration groups and the way this has evolved from idealism to frustration to mere coexistence amid loss of faith. Obama's frustration expressed in words such as "I am not a king." And the immigration groups voicing their concerns about Obama's loss of credibility, as minorities especially Hispanics have fared poorly during his adminsitration, hit by rising deportations, foreclosures and the impact of high unemployment in construction and other sectors.

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President Obama's call for boosting the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 in his 2013 State of the Union address designed to lift millions out of poverty.

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Alastair Gale shows how the strategy of Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawahiri with Orascom worked in many countries from Iraq to Bangladesh- taking on debt to build wireless networks in less attractive emerging market countries and then selling the assets to other companies. This worked when it sold its Iraqi operation to a Kuwaiti company, and its other assets to a Russian company. Russia's mobile operator VimpelCom Ltd. made a deal worth $6 billion for most of Orascom's assets in 2011. In North Korea this strategy failed with the loss of the local operation to North Korean authorites.

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Strong deman in the first quarter 2008 for cars in China 2 VW models the Santana and the Jetta are in the top 5 bestsellers along with Honda Accord and Buick Excelle but Buick Excelle is 5 years old and is slipping. Cherry is no 5 in best selling models. @.58 million cars sold in China in 1st quarter up 21 % from last year. Hond gained as no2 to the Santana because its a global new generation release of this model. The Chinese market is quite perceptive and demanding and GM may hav become complacent with the Excelle 5 years old.

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Su Liping, professor at Tsinghua Unversity, says there were 180,000 protests, riots and other incidents, protesting economic injustice in 2010. Most of the incidents were against land grabs, corruption and abuses by local officials, and unpaid wages. Inflation has hit the poor, migrant workers and people with low incomes hardest. Food prices were up 13.4% in August over the same month prior year. Pork prices were up 52.3%. Other problems are now meshed in with inflation. Local government debt in China, according to the National Audit Office, was 10.7 trillion yuan in June 2011. The National Audit Office estimates 23% of this, or 2.5 trillion yuan, depends on land for repayment. Analysts say China's local government made repayment in 2010 using the 2.9 trillion yuan in revenue from land sales. The same amount of land has to be sold in 2010 to make repayment. At lower prices even more land may have to be sold. The danger say Orlik and Jie, is that inflation and the pressure to acquire more land- and consequently more land grabs- will pose severe risks to the social contract in China....

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Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina wins a third consecutive term in office, winning 288 seats in parliament. Sheikh Hasina's Awami League was challenged in this election by a coalition of parties after her main opponent Khaleda Zia was jailed earlier in 2018 for corruption and was barred from running in the election. Hasina is the daughter of independence leader Mujibur Rahman. Khaleda Zia is the widow of a military commander who founded the BNP party. Both have alternated in office- with Hasina in office for the last decade having run Bangladesh focusing on development and economic growth that was about 6% each year over the decade.

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Current UK approval ratings show Labour losing a lot of support and would be he largest party but lead Tories by about 10 seats. Keir Starmer's unfavorability rating is about 61% and his favorability rating at about 27% by Ipsos in December 2024. Kemi Badenoch's is worse than Rishi Sunak and at negative 5% net approval (difference betwen approval and disapproval) approaches the negative 9% of Liz Truss. 

Reform UK of Nigel Farage could increase it's seats in parliament to 71 from 5 seats. Liberals would have close to Reform UK seats and Greens 8 seats. Labour according to one poll would have 256 seats to Tories 208. Labour could have a tiny majority with the help of Liberal Democrats compared to the landslide recently on 60% of eligible voters actually voting.

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This exceptional NYT report by Noam Scheiber describes the impact of the Obama administration's new overtime pay rules requiring time and a half overtime pay for most salaried employees paid less than $47,476 a year. For a long time now firms in publishing, consulting, media, advocacy groups, and other fields have made young people work long hours for low pay without overtime pay just so they have opportunities later. This is especially true for the last decade when jobs were scarce, especially for young graduates. The rule is inspired by a need for better work-life balance, to widen opportunities to beyond the group where affluent parents supported their kids in these jobs, and by the sometimes abusive nature of the overtime work that could extend from 7 am to 7 pm or such hours at what amounted to minimum wage work for well educated but aspiring college graduates.