Latest Updates
It’s the Egyptian Economy, Stupid
Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty
Egypt’s sputtering economy and high unemployment pose serious challenges—and are the same issues that led to the revolution against Mubarak in the first place. Mike Giglio reports.
As Egypt lurches from one crisis to the next, it’s the country’s battered economy, analysts say, that may be President Mohamed Morsi’s greatest challenge yet.The 2011 revolution that toppled Morsi’s predecessor, former dictator Hosni Mubarak, was inspired by—in addition to police abuse and suffocating repression—the dire financial straits most Egyptians faced. Alongside Tahrir Square’s famous anti-Mubarak chants, protesters also rallied around a more basic slogan, in which the first demand went to the needs of the dinner table: “Bread, Freedom, and Social Justice.
Garbage In, Power Out
Richard Elliott/Getty
Oslo burns garbage to produce energy. But with Norwegians producing less trash, the city is now importing junk.
One man's trash is another man's treasure, and in Norway, that’s literally the case. But Oslo, the capital city, seems to be running out of this vital commodity.The New York Times reported Monday that Oslo, which has long burned waste to heat half of the city and almost all its schools, is lacking the materials need for fuel: household trash, commercial and industrial waste, and even hazardous junk from hospitals. With the rise of recyclable and reusable products, Oslo’s volume of trash just isn’t what it used to be.
Monster Sues San Francisco
To stop drinking bans.
Let's hope they have the energy for this fight. Monster Beverage Corp. filed a lawsuit on Monday accusing San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera and his office of acting illegally by capping serving sizes and restricting marketing. Energy drinks made by Monster, as well as Pepsi’s AMP and Living Essentials’ 5-Hour Energy, have come under scrutiny from the government recently due to safety concerns.
Yahoo Expands Benefits
For new mothers and fathers.
Talk about mixed messages. Months after coming under fire for cutting down on employees working from home, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has increased the amount of paid leave for new parents. The new policy, now with eight weeks of full-paid leave for fathers and 16 weeks for mothers, will bring Yahoo more in line with its tech competitors, allowing it to better compete for talent.
Miami Real Estate Returns
New construction booms.
Despite its role as an epicenter of the real-estate bubble burst in 2008, Miami’s housing and condo market have returned with a bang in 2013. Due in large part to Latin American investors looking for a safe investment, in February, the housing market in Miami grew in value by 10.4 percent. Unsurprisingly, as a result, developers are rushing to build more—most notoriously the $1.05 billion Brickell City Centre.
The Return of the Power Paunch
Prince Albert, Tony Soprano, and Bill Clinton were all known for theirs: the power paunch. Sean Macaulay on the most exquisite of all male accessories.
As he does every year, Prince Albert of Monaco attended this month’s Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters tennis tournament. The 55-year-old head of the House of Grimaldi did all the appropriate regal things: he brought his wife, he applauded enthusiastically, he presented the winning medals. He also swapped his crested blazer for some tennis whites to play a few sets in an exhibition game, revealing a new dimension to the royal playbook. Namely, his majestic paunch.
Peak Oil Still Isn't Real, You Guys
And despite all the Malthusian nonsense, we've still got plenty of oil and natural gas, reports the National Journal's Amy Harder.The United States has double the amount of oil and three times the amount of natural gas than previously thought, stored deep under the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, according to new data the Obama administration released Tuesday.In announcing the new data in a conference call, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell also said the administration will release within weeks draft rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing, technology that has come under scrutiny for its environmental impact but that is essential to developing all of this energy.
Should We Force Other Countries to Be Safe?
Questions linger in the wake of the Bangladeshi disaster
Matt Yglesias took a lot of flak last week for responding to an Erik Loomis post about the tragic collapse of a Bangladeshi garment factory by saying: It's very plausible that one reason American workplaces have gotten safer over the decades is that we now tend to outsource a lot of factory-explosion-risk to places like Bangladesh where 87 people just died in a building collapse.* This kind of consideration leads Erik Loomis to the conclusion that we need a unified global standard for safety, by which he does not mean that Bangladeshi levels of workplace safety should be implemented in the United States.
The War on Salami Finally Ends!
Free trade comes at last to the salami industry, reports the New York Times:The United States Department of Agriculture will relax a decades-long ban on the importation of many Italian cured-pork meat products from some regions of Italy starting May 28, including sought-after staples such as salami.On Friday, the department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services announced that an in-country assessment had determined that four regions and two provinces of Italy are free of swine vesicular disease, a dangerous communicable ailment that infects pigs, and that “the importation of pork or pork products from these areas presents a low risk.
Is Your Shirt From Here?
Munir uz Zaman/AFP/Getty
The list of retailers whose clothing was made at the Bangladesh factory complex where the collapse has killed nearly 400 is growing. Nina Strochlic on the unending cycle of tragedies.
Was your shirt or jeans stitched by one of the nearly 1,000 garment workers who were injured or killed in the recent factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh? You might want to check the label.In the week since an eight-story, four-factory complex collapsed in Bangladesh, online records and physical debris revealed a growing list of international retailers tied to the suppliers housed in the Rana Plaza building. More than a dozen brands have been identified—including big names like The Children’s Place, Benetton, Mango, and Primark—and a number of these companies have emerged to explain their association with the shoddily built, illegal bloc that housed the factories.
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Colbert Rips 'Spreadsheet Error' in Austerity Supporting Harvard Study
After a University of Massachusetts student found significant errors in a study beloved by budget cutters world over by Harvard economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, Stephen Colbert does what he does best -- leaves them in the dust.
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Big Fat Green Government
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Years of abuses at Ranbaxy raise worries about the FDA's oversight of the generics market.
Latest from The Daily Beast
A Mayor Watches in Horror
Oklahoma City’s Mick Cornett has been here before—and asks for prayers for those in Moore. By John Avlon.



