Scrolling around...January 2, 2013

An F for effort on holding down tuition
...These facts and figures, gleaned from a fascinating article in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, are depressingly typical of American higher education, where administrative payrolls and other non-teaching costs have been growing rapidly — without any obvious commensurate benefit for students.

To the contrary, the bloat on many U.S. campuses is now a significant cause, along with cutbacks in state spending, of the surge in tuition, which, in turn, is an obstacle to upward mobility for an entire generation of young Americans...

In the Middle East, the Arab spring has given way to a Christian winter
...Why is all this so under-reported? This answer is simple: Christians rank low in an unacknowledged hierarchy of victimhood. Young Christians in the west don't become radicalised in support of their fellow believers, and persecuted Christians rarely respond with terrorist violence. This also tends to render their plight less newsworthy in the media eyes.

The truth about religious oppression – that it is Christians who are targeted in greater numbers than any other faith group on earth – thus comes as a surprise to many. A survey from 2007 found that some 200 million believers, or 10% of the global total, are threatened by discrimination or harassment or outright violence. The problem extends well outside Islamic countries to include India, the communist world, and even to Buddhist-majority societies such as Burma and Sri Lanka...

The Islamization of France in 2012
Muslim immigrants and their supporters have been using a combination of lawsuits, verbal and physical harassment -- and even murder -- to silence debate about the rise of Islam...

New laws on New Year's Day, from gay marriage to ‘Caylee’s Law’
While much attention has been paid to the ‘fiscal cliff’ and the federal legislation behind it, thousands of new state laws took effect more quietly at the start of 2013...

House Passes Fiscal Cliff Bill; Obama Says He Will Sign It
...The bill passed with a majority of Democrats, 172-16, and a minority of Republicans, 85-151. It was negotiated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Vice President Joe Biden and easily passed the Senate, 89-8, early Tuesday morning...

Recipe for a long life: overweight people have LOWER death risk
...Mild obesity (those with a BMI between 30 and 34.9) brings a 5 per cent lower premature death rate, according to the study. Although this was not statistically significant, it suggests there is no increased risk of premature death attached to that weight range...

More Christians jailed in Iran
...The arrests are the latest developments in a December crackdown on house churches by the Iranian government...