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Georgia rebuilds Stalin monuments

“A Joseph Stalin statue went back up in the Georgian village of Alvani on Friday in a sign of the slipping authority of President Mikheil Saakashvili, who had ordered its removal.
The pro-Western president is serving out what some are calling a lame-duck term ahead of elections next year from which he is barred on account of the end of his 10-year constitutional mandate. Saakashvili, whose forces fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008 and who has always sought to ally Georgia with the United States, had spearheaded a furious de-Stalinisation campaign.” Continue reading →

Men Find Careers in Collecting Disability

“In 1960, some 455,000 workers were receiving disability payments. In 2011, the number was 8,600,000. In 1960, the percentage of the economically active 18-to-64 population receiving disability benefits was 0.65 percent. In 2010, it was 5.6 percent. Things have changed. Americans have grown healthier, and significantly lower numbers die before 65 than was the case a half-century ago. Nevertheless, the disability rolls have ballooned. Eberstadt points out that in 1960, only one-fifth of disability benefits went to those with ‘mood disorders’ and ‘muscoskeletal’ problems. In 2011, nearly half of those on disability voiced such complaints.” Continue reading →

Why the Poles keep coming: The British welfare trap

“If I was in a position of a British single mother I have not the slightest doubt that I would choose welfare. Why break your back on the minimum wage for longer than you have to, if it doesn’t pay? Some people do have the resolve to do it. I know I wouldn’t. Until our policymakers start to see things through the eyes of those ensnared in welfare traps, nothing will change. The Poles are not caught in this welfare trap. For then, the work premium is far higher. If you had designed a system to keep the poor down, in would not look much different to the above.” Continue reading →

Facebook paid small tax bill on big profits made outside US, figures show

“Facebook is structured so that companies buying advertisements on the website in the UK, or anywhere outside of the US, have to pay Facebook Ireland. This allowed Facebook Ireland to make gross 2011 profits of £840m – or £3.1m per each of its 287 staff. Despite the high gross profit, Facebook Ireland was able to cut its tax bill to just €3.2m by using an accounting technique called the ‘Double Irish’. The manoeuvre allows multinationals to move large amounts of money to other subsidiaries in the form of royalty payments. Facebook moved nearly £750m to the Cayman Islands and its Californian parent in licensing and royalty payments.” Continue reading →

Useless U.S.-Canada train roundtrips exploit U.S. energy program

“A train carrying biodiesel crisscrossed the Canada-US border repeatedly without unloading its cargo, exploiting a loophole in a US green energy program. The EPA mandates that oil companies must bring a certain amount of renewable fuel to the US market. Verdeo retired an equivalent number of credits generated from ethanol production that were worth pennies compared to biodiesel credits that traded as high as one US dollar apiece when it turned the train around. A dozen back-and-forth railway trips across the border reportedly cost Can $2.6 million but would have generated biodiesel credits worth US $12 million.” Continue reading →

Sweden’s small Arctic town of Kiruna plans to offer commercial space flights

“Sweden’s small Arctic town of Kiruna has a surprisingly international airport with regular flights to London and Tokyo, but it has even bigger plans: to offer commercial space flights. The idea is that space tourists would take off for a maximum two-hour trip into space aboard futuristic spacecraft currently undergoing testing, which resemble a cross between an airplane and a space shuttle and which can carry between one and six passengers. The sub-orbital flights will send passengers 100 kilometres (60 miles) above Earth and allow them to experience five minutes of weightlessness.” Continue reading →

Smugglers use cannon to fire 85 pounds of marijuana into Arizona

“In what appears to be yet another innovation in the drug war arms race, authorities said they found 33 cans of marijuana weighing about 85 pounds, and worth approximately $42,500, strewn across a field on Friday. A search turned up a carbon dioxide tank likely used to propel the containers. The emergence of an actual cannon, though surprising, isn’t an entirely unexpected development. The National Guard said last year that it spotted drug smugglers using catapults. Some have even resorted to homemade submarines — one of which sunk off the coast of Panama just last week.” Continue reading →

Turning urine into brain cells could help fight Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

“Chinese researchers have devised a new technique for reprogramming cells from human urine into immature brain cells that can form multiple types of functioning neurons and glial cells. The technique, published today in the journal Nature Methods, could prove useful for studying the cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and for testing the effects of new drugs that are being developed to treat them.” Continue reading →