Your customized headlines for Wed, Apr 4, 2012

Outside Washington, the world is moving at warp speed away from the BlackBerry. At its maker, profits are declining and executives are leaving, and the BlackBerry has even conceded its perch as the top smartphone in its native Canada.

The Federal Reserve appears unlikely to launch another round of economic stimulus to try to generate additional growth and quicken the decline in unemployment, according to minutes of the Fed's March meeting released Tuesday.

Foreign regulators are taking a close look at Google and Motorola Mobility as federal regulators in the United States continue to work on their own antitrust probe into the tech giant.

Officials in the European Union are looking at Motorola patents and Google's search business, while a court in Australia recently found that the company hosted misleading ads on its AdWords platform.

The Wolfson Economics Prize will be awarded to the best contingency plan for the breakup of the euro zone. All five finalists, which were announced Tuesday, are expert economists and financial analysts. But the judges also awarded a special mention to the youngest entrant, an 11-year-old boy from the Netherlands (he was 10 when he submitted the entry). Here's Jurre Hermans's plan for Greece to make an orderly exit from the euro zone, which he illustrated as well:

LONDON – James Murdoch stepped down as chairman of British Sky Broadcasting on Tuesday, saying he could become "a lightning rod" for attacks on the satellite network following his role in the long-running phone-hacking scandal.

The Federal Reserve appears unlikely to launch another round of economic stimulus to try to generate additional growth and quicken the decline in unemployment, according to minutes of the Fed's March meeting released Tuesday.

President Obama delivered a stern and stinging rebuke of the Republican vision for the country Tuesday, castigating the GOP as a "radical" party that has strayed so far from the political middle that its policies represent an affront to core American values.

— Reihan Salam responds to Ezra's column on the effect Ryan's budget will have on social mobility.

— Speaking of which, the party reactions to Obama's budget speech seem like more evidence in favor of Ezra's thesis on presidential polarization.

Here's a riff from Obama's budget speech today that I predict you're going to hear quite often over the next year:

Meanwhile, these proposed tax breaks would come on top of more than a trillion dollars in tax giveaways for people making more than $250,000 a year. That's an average of at least $150,000 for every millionaire in this country -- $150,000. Let's just step back for a second and look at what $150,000 pays for:

A year's worth of prescription drug coverage for a senior citizen. Plus a new school computer lab. Plus a year of medical care for a returning veteran. Plus a medical research grant for a chronic disease. Plus a year's salary for a firefighter or police officer. Plus a tax credit to make a year of college more affordable. Plus a year's worth of financial aid. One hundred fifty thousand dollars could pay for all of these things combined -- investments in education and research that are essential to economic growth that benefits all of us. For $150,000, that would be going to each millionaire and billionaire in this country. This budget says we'd be better off as a country if that's how we spend it.

As Ezra pointed out recently, the cost of your health care depends a lot on where you live. An MRI that costs $1,080 here in the United States would come in at $280 in France. Even within the United States, there's big variation in how much we pay for the exact same treatment.