Why is Teach for America controversial?Because its recruits take jobs from career teachers TEACH FOR AMERICA (TFA), a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1990, places its young “corps members” at schools in poor areas to teach for two years. Most come fresh from college, and they learn mainly on the job. On September 10th a report for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the research arm

How can you buy illegal drugs online?Via a secretive website, with the help of a few Bitcoins “I’M WAITING for my man / Twenty-six dollars in my hand / Up to Lexington, 125 / Feeling sick and dirty, more dead than alive.” So sang Lou Reed in 1967, about visiting Harlem to buy heroin. Getting hold of drugs has never been all that easy. Scoring has long meant hanging around scary street corners or d

By C.W. | LONDON ACADEMIC economists crave citations. And if a researcher gets an appointment at a prestigious university, or becomes a government adviser, it might mean that they get a few more. But what is the effect of the most prestigious prize of all? You would think that the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, first awarded in 1969, would send the winner’s citation count through the r

What is the difference between common and civil law?Common law gives judges an active role in developing rules; civil law is based on fixed codes and statutes IN THE summer of 2013 British royalists were eagerly awaiting the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child. If the couple had had a girl instead of bonny Prince George, she would have been the first daughter to be able to acc

By J.S. IT IS not hard to find reasons why disaffection with the European Union might be growing within Europe. GDP in the euro area has declined for the sixth successive quarter and unemployment is running at record levels in many countries. Germany resents bailing out profligate neighbours and its relationship with France, which has just slipped into recession, is at a low ebb. In Britain, the C

By Economist.com Which city has the most millionaires? MORE millionaires live in Tokyo than in any other city, according to a new report from WealthInsight, a consultancy. The city, which boasts 460,700 individuals with net assets of $1m or more (excluding their primary residences), is home to over a fifth of Japan's millionaires. You might think that anyone interested in rubbing shoulders with th

CZECHS thought they had less of an international identity problem than people from other small Central European countries, say Slovaks, Latvians or Lithuanians. After all, Václav Havel, Milos Forman, Jaromír Jágr (pictured above) and other famous Czechs must have put their country on the map.