Bill Gates Doesn’t Want Minimum Wage Raised

Bill Gates and other members of the 1 percent worry about having to pay more taxes to increasereas wages; the United States turned its back on the Arab Spring; meanwhile, an Oklahoma legislator wants to forbid all marriages so gays won’t wed either. These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

Gates Unmasks the Real Face of Davos Bill Gates is worried – too many people are talking about raising the minimum wage.

A Lawyer and Partner, and Also Bankrupt Anyone who wonders why law school applications are plunging and there’s widespread malaise in many big law firms might consider the case of Gregory M. Owens.

How America abandoned Egypt’s Arab Spring Egyptian voters this month ratified a new constitution that enshrines the military, police and intelligence in positions of unprecedented power.

Israelis Debate Classroom Freedom of Speech If she knew that the letter she wrote would cause such turmoil in the Israeli educational system, it’s doubtful whether she would have written it.

UCSD Scientists Invent antibiotic Discovery Method Scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography have invented a way to more efficiently discover potential drugs from ocean bacteria.

Clintonland: Just Like High School Amy Chozick’s big cover story in The New York Times Magazine, which is unfortunately accompanied by the weirdest and worst cover art in magazine history (I exaggerate only a little), is yet another piece about the people in the Clintons’s orbit, and what they will mean should Hillary decide to run in 2016.

Wikileaks Exposes Pacific Trade Deal’s Environmental Failure Having leaked the disturbing details in the chapter on intelectual property rights in the secret proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) last year, WikiLeaks released the TPP’s environment chapter on January 15.

How to Tap the Sun’s Energy Through Heat as Well as Light New approach developed at MIT could generate power from sunlight efficiently and on demand.

Oklahoma Lawmaker: Ban All Marriages So Gays Can’t Marry Mike Turner, a Republican state representative in Oklahoma, is apparently so desperate to stop the inevitable arrival of marriage equality in his state that he would rather end civil marriage altogether than allow gays and lesbians to participate in it.