The UN Security Council has now voted to allow French troops to join an African peacekeeping force in the CAR.
What You Need to Know About the International Test Scores →
The point worth noting here is that U.S. students have never been top performers on the international tests. We are doing about the same now on PISA as we have done for the past half century.
Does it matter?
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's uncle purged, two aides executed →
US Shutting Down a Key News Source →
"The U.S. intelligence community vacuums up vast amounts of data, but it has one agency, World News Connection, that gives back information to the public – except that the service is getting shut down at year’s end, notes ex-intelligence analyst Elizabeth Murray."
Could A Tech Giant Build A Better Health Exchange? Maybe Not →
Oregon has spent more than $40 million to build its own online health care exchange. It gave that money to a Silicon Valley titan, Oracle, but the result has been a disaster of missed deadlines, a nonworking website and a state forced to process thousands of insurance applications on paper.
...
Initially, Oracle promised it could get the job done. But by mid-May, the head of Cover Oregon, Rocky King, had written the company, pleading for "a simple calendar schedule ... to ascertain whether or not we will be able to deliver" a working exchange by Oct. 1.
Five months later, when Oregon's exchange was supposed to go live, the site still didn't work. And as recently as two weeks ago, the state had not yet managed to sign up a single person for private health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act.
via DaringFireball
Trial begins in legal challenge to no-fly list →
Really curious how far this will go, and what will come to light. The political incentives are so bad around the current implementation, I hope this and similar cases will significantly reform the process: stricter use, better oversight.
Egypt overhauls constitution, empowers military →
The amended document enshrines personal and political rights in stronger language than past constitutions. But rights experts express fears that the political power carved out for the military could leave those rights irrelevant.
One key clause states that for the next two presidential terms, the armed forces will enjoy the exclusive right of naming the defense minister, an arrangement that gives the military autonomy above any civilian oversight and leaves the power of the president uncertain. The charter does not say how the post will be filled following that eight-year transitional period.
Diary: Sistema →
"...It was the system in miniature – the strange intermeshing of corruption and scrupulousness (you did have to go through the motions of the test), the role of officialdom as both obstructor and enabler, the co-option and the simulation."
The "rational" basis for this game is a very bizarre calculus. I'm astounded by how much work people will put into appearing to be on the up-and-up.