South Korea fact of the day

Of 182 boys and young men recently locked up in Illinois' three medium-security youth prisons, at least 135 used to miss so much school that they were labeled chronic truants. Nearly 60 percent couldn't even read at the third-grade level when they were booked in.

Lawmakers in Washington appear to be inching closer to a long-anticipated immigration overhaul that would address issues from pathway to citizenship to border security.

More than 90 percent of schoolchildren in South Korea own a mobile phone and they start using them at an average age of 10 years and fours months, according to a survey published Friday.The study, conducted by a local politician and Dankook University's medical school, polled 6,052 elementary, middle and high school students.It found that some 96 percent of middle and high school students and 83 percent of elementary students owned a mobile and the monthly average phone bill was 27,290 won ($23).

While the rest of the developed (read trade deficit) world's foray into the currency wars was completely predictable and expected, there was one country that had so far kept very silent on the topic of Japan's attempts to crush its currency: its main export competitor, South Korea.

Guest post by Laura McKenna, former political science writer, blogger, and freelance writer. In yesterday's New York Times, David Kirp, a public policy professor from Berkeley, explains that school integration made a large, long term impact on African-American students.

Guest post by Laura McKenna, former political science writer, blogger, and freelance writer. In yesterday's New York Times, David Kirp, a public policy professor from Berkeley, explains that school integration made a large, long term impact on African-American students.

Guest blog post by Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke.This week, I’m visiting the Republic of Korea, one of the United States’ closest allies in the world, and one of our most important trading partners.  Last December, President Obama signed a landmark trade deal with Korea that could boost annual exports of American goods to Korea by up to $11 billion, supporting at least 70,000 U.S. jobs. But the deal still needs to pass Congress, which is why this week, I’m leading four Members of Congress on a fact-finding mission that will demonstrate firsthand how this trade deal will lead directly to more sales of American goods and services abroad and more American jobs here at home. Korean and U.S. businesses are already collaborating, innovating and trading together like never before.  This week, members of our delegation – which includes Representatives Dave Reichert and Jim McDermott from my home state of Washington and Representatives Joseph Crowley and Charles Rangel from New York – are getting to see this up close. Tomorrow, we visit Pantech, one of Korea’s largest mobile phone makers, and a major buyer of U.S. technology. 

Something the United States really excels at is having the very best universities in the world. But the sense in which this is most clearly true isn’t that our universities, on average, are the best in the world. Rather, the point is that of the world’s very best universities the vast majority are American. But as Kevin Carey notes this is hardly all that matters: