PMQs: Harriet Harman has the best gag, but blows it

Jerry Taylor
Jerry Taylor is among the most widely cited and influential critics of federal Energy and environmental Policy in the nation. Taylor is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and National Review and appears regularly on CNBC, NPR, Bloomberg Radio, the BBC, and Fox News. His op-eds on public Policy have appeared in the pages of The Washington Post , The New York Times , The Los Angeles Times and most other major dailies. His extended essays on Energy Policy have appeared in ...

Inside Pyongyang, the North Korean chain with restaurants across Asia.
Packed for dinner each night, the Pyongyang restaurant in the heart of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, is as famous for its kimchi as for its troupe of talented Korean waitresses, who perform an elaborate floor show for patrons. But Pyongyang is no ordinar

Chinese company starts work on a new hydroelectric dam in Cambodia
Phnom Penh, Cambodia — A Chinese company began work Thursday on a hydroelectric dam in Cambodia, the second Chinese dam project launched this week in the country where only about a quarter of the population has electricity. The two projects are among several hydroelectric dams planned to reduce power shortages in Cambodia although activists warn they could cause environmental harm. State-owned China Huadian Corp., one of China's biggest power companies, will build the 338-megawatt dam on...

About That Playboy in My Drawer . . .
I don't keep a copy of Playboy in my office drawer, but Bret Stephens does: It's time to make a personal and professional admission: I keep a copy of the Feb. 2007 issue of Playboy in a desk drawer in my Wall Street Journal office. This is not the sort of thing I ever thought I'd publicly confess. But I'm prompted to do so now in response to a string of online rebuttals to my Tuesday column, "Lady GaGa Versus Mideast Peace," in which I argue that Western Liberalism (in its old-fashioned sense)...

Bret Stephens: About That Playboy in My Drawer
It's time to make a personal and professional admission: I keep a copy of the Feb. 2007 issue of Playboy in a desk drawer in my Wall Street Journal office. This is not the sort of thing I ever thought I'd publicly confess. But I'm prompted to do so now in response to a string of online rebuttals to my Tuesday column, " Lady GaGa Versus Mideast Peace ," in which I argue that Western Liberalism (in its old-fashioned sense) has done far more than Israel's Settlements to provoke violent Muslim...

Books@Daily Finance: Too Big to Fail = Too Big
It definitely seemed like a turning point. Lehman Brothers was bankrupt, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch had each been sold for a song, and the biggest institutions were pleading for government aid during the fall of 2008. A new title hit bookstore shelves: The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It . But the end was only a new beginning, it now seems. "While some fabled institutions have vanished, the survivors have emerged larger, more profitable, and even more...

John Kerry Meets Syria's Assad
Please re-enter the email address. From time to time, we will send you e-mail announcements on new features and special offers from The Wall Street Journal Online. Create a profile for me in the Journal Community

Obama Energy Pick Backs Higher Gas Tax
ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: Barack Obama's pick for Department of Energy secretary backs higher gasoline taxes, a position which puts him at odds with the president-elect. "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told the Wall Street Journal in September . Chu said he favors gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to nudge consumers into buying...

CEO of Ivy Asset Management Departs
Please re-enter the email address. From time to time, we will send you e-mail announcements on new features and special offers from The Wall Street Journal Online. Create a profile for me in the Journal Community

First iPad reviews appear, mostly thumbs up
As expected, Apple gave the New York Times' David Pogue , USA Today's Ed Baig and the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg an early crack at the iPad for reviews that just appeared. The device, of course, goes on sale Saturday starting at $499. The chosen few apparently loved it, but had a few quibbles. Both Mossberg and Pogue found the iPad battery life better than Apple's promised 10 hours, with Pogue getting 12 hours of video playback and Mossberg more than 11. Mossberg agrees with...

Wall Street Journal Slashes Price to Bleed The New York Times
Three years ago, News Corp. ( NWS ) Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch bought The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones for more than $5 billion, an insanely high price for a floundering company in a moribund industry. Murdoch is ignoring the naysayers again as he targets the New York Times Co. ( NYT ). The Australian Media tycoon takes no prisoners when he competes against his enemies like the Times , which conservatives consider the liberal Media elite's high temple. According to Reuters ,...

High Marks For iPad From Reviewers
-- The Wall Street Journal 's Walter Mossberg says "this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the Laptop." -- Ed Baig at USA TODAY calls it "a winner" and says it "stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon's Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money. At the very least, the iPad will likely drum up mass-market interest in tablet...

Karl Rove's Advice For The Tea Partiers
Stay independent. Weed out the kooks. Get a focused message. From today's Wall Street Journal : My advice to them is to keep their distance from any single Party and instead influence both parties on Debt, spending and an over-reaching Federal Government. Allowing third-party movements to co-opt the Tea partiers' good name, which is happening in Nevada, will only serve to elect opponents of the Tea Party philosophy of low-taxes and fiscal restraint. It could also discredit the Tea Party...

Lawrence W. Schonbrun: The Fall of the 'King of Torts' Is Merely the Tip of the Iceberg of Class Action Deceit
The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed a new book published this month about attorney-felon and former "King of Torts" Class Action lawyer Bill Lerach. The article deals with the unscrupulous ways in which he sued corporations claiming to be on the side of "the little guy" - while amassing a personal fortune estimated at $900 million, according to the San Diego Business Journal. However, by focusing on Mr. Lerach's personal misdeeds, the article fails to address the much larger fraud...

AT&T Scrambles For Possibility Of Verizon iPhone
2009 was of course jam packed with people complaining about the performance of the iPhone on AT&T's network -- at least in congested markets like New York and The Bay Area. After taking a serious beating in the press, AT&T quickly got to work adding more backhaul and cell sites, converting their markets to 850Mhz, and according to a new report from Wall Street Journal this week, working more closely with Apple on ways to make the iPhone a little more efficient in terms of network use....

AT&T To iPhone Users: Our Network Is Good Now, Please Don’t Sign Up With Verizon
On Monday, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal that there were two new iPhones in the works, including one for the Verizon Wireless network. Now, there’s additional unnamed people leaking information to the publication that defends AT&T’s network quality, saying that the second-largest operator has taken drastic measures to prevent dropped calls. Not only that, but AT&T ( NYSE: T ) is quoted as saying that it believes any rival that picks up Apple’s...

Perks Are Trimmed Amid Backlash on Pay
By DANA MATTIOLI Some CEO perks are disappearing in the aftermath of Recession and amid public outrage over Executive pay. CEO-Compensation Survey See the full results of the Wall Street Journal's 2009 pay survey. A Proxy-Statement Primer See a guide using excerpts of proxy statements from three companies. Forty-four of the 200 companies in The Wall Street Journal's 2009 chief-executive pay survey have eliminated at least one perk, compared with 27 concerns that eliminated perks the year...

Amazon Loses E-Book Pricing War
Brennon Slattery Publishers have emerged victorious in the e-book pricing war with Amazon. The world's largest online retailer has conceded to the demands of three major publishing houses and will cease heavily discounting new best-selling e-books, according to the Wall Street Journal . Amazon and Macmillan already exchanged fisticuffs about money in February with Macmillan leaving the ring unscathed . Now Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins have joined the bandwagon in refusing to...

Google Co-founder Sergey Brin Says China Reminds Him of His Native Soviet Union
Google's decision to stop service in China was based on the company's growing unease about the compromises required by Beijing, co-founder Sergey Brin tells the Wall Street Journal . The Censorship exercised by the government reminded him of life in the Soviet Union, which Brin and his parents left when he was 6. "I see the same Earmarks of Totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling," he says. Things got worse after the Olympics, and the cyber-attacks in January,...

Credit Suisse, York Capital in Talks
Please re-enter the email address. From time to time, we will send you e-mail announcements on new features and special offers from The Wall Street Journal Online. Create a profile for me in the Journal Community

Potato, Potato: NYT Says Hedge Fund Pay 'Roars Back,' WSJ Says CEO Pay 'Falls Again'
The covers of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times ' business section today both have huge stories on Wall Street pay. And they look very different. The Times story, "Pay of Hedge Fund Managers Roared Back Last Year," says that the country's top 25 Hedge Fund managers made $25.3 billion last year, easily beating the old 2007 high. It even shows the top ten: David Tepper, George Soros, James Simons, John Paulson, Steve Cohen (the only tie-less investor of the group), Carl Icahn...

WSJ cuts prices in battle with New York Times
* Murdoch challenges Times with a New York metro edition Stocks   |   Bonds   |   Global Markets   |   Media * Price cuts seen as risky move By Daniel Trotta New YORK, March 31 (Reuters) - The Wall Street Journal is cutting New subscription prices by as much as 80 percent in some cases as it prepares to confront its rival, the New York Times, with a New York City edition. The move comes amid a plunge in U.S. newspaper...

Corporate Bosses Paid Less
By JOANN S. LUBLIN The boss took another haircut as CEO compensation edged lower in 2009, the first time in two decades that pay declined for two consecutive years. CEO-Compensation Survey See the full results of the Wall Street Journal's 2009 pay survey. A Proxy-Statement Primer See a guide using excerpts of proxy statements from three companies. The median value of salaries, bonuses, long-term incentives, and grants of stock and stock options for the chief executives of 200 major U.S....

Corker Pleads With Democrats: Don't 'Dare' Republicans To Vote Against Strong Financial Reform
Corker Pleads With Democrats: Don’t ‘Dare’ Republicans To Vote Against Strong Financial Reform In an interview published today with the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) — who took the lead on Financial regulatory Reform negotiations for the Republican side for a few weeks — said that he “ absolutely cannot support ” the Reform bill passed by the Senate Banking Committee last week. “I have no plans to support the current legislation....

Don't be fooled by Obama's announcement on off-shore drilling
By responding to a Republican rallying cry to "drill, baby, Drill," the announcement gives the administration leverage to entice the GOP and moderate Republicans to support a bipartisan proposal being crafte d...  ( Wall Street Journal ) Obama said he is " considering " this...  and already the left is livid . Obama is still pushing a Climate Change and Energy Bill , so expect the backroom deals to begin.  John Boehner says , "Keeping the...