Inc.com points out that “Texas and Maine recently joined a growing list of states that have enacted legislation to ease regulatory burdens on smaller businesses. Last week, Texas signed into law a measure requiring assessments of the impact of all new state regulations on small businesses, along with mandatory proposals for alternative means of accomplishing the same objectives. A similar law enacted in Maine two weeks earlier requires regulatory agencies to study the effect of any new regulations on small businesses and seek cheaper alternatives for achieving the same goals.”
Yahoo!News reports that, according to Russian newspaper Kommersant, “Internet sites in Russia should be censored to combat extremist material, a senior legal official says. ‘Changes need to be made to the current laws. As experience shows there is often room on the Internet for the spread of material of an extremist nature,’ Deputy Prosecutor General Ivan Sydoruk was quoted as saying by Kommersant.”
According to the International Herald Tribune, “[t]he British prime minister-elect, Gordon Brown, proposed Thursday that the country scrap its tax on profit earned abroad by subsidiaries of some of the biggest British companies. A change would allow British businesses to take advantage of lower tax rates in places like Luxembourg and Ireland and bring Britain in line with European Union law. It also would reduce and simplify British company taxes as part of an effort by Brown to protect the ability of Britain to attract business investment.”
The Financial Times writes that “European Union leaders will on Friday throw their weight behind a planned institute to spur cutting-edge research, as efforts to finance the troubled scheme reach a critical juncture. José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, hopes that his project will help to bridge the innovation gap with competitors such as the US, with the scheme once touted as a potential rival to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
eWeek.com asks: “Is open source dying?”