The Affordable Care Act has seen two mildly hopeful signs lately. First, though every recent poll has found that the public is unhappy with Obama and the ACA, Obama’s losses don’t seem to be translating into GOP gains. The second piece of news is that a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation hints that the worries about rates of enrollment by “young invincibles” may be overblown. If these are both accurate, the Obama administration could be in for the best run of positive coverage its gotten about the ACA in a while.

Now that Mexico’s energy reforms are all but certain to go through, countries around the world are preparing to move in on the imminently available new energy market. The US has the expertise to frack Mexico’s prodigious shale reserves, but Asia has the demand to make it a strong investor in Mexico’s hydrocarbon riches.

An up-and-down year for MOOCs looks set to end on a down note. Earlier this week, San Jose State prepared to finally put an end end its partnership with Udacity after the failure of a trial program this spring. Meanwhile, edX announced the end of its plans to partner students with employers due to a lack of interest from employers.

Is charismatic Christianity coming to Europe? Up until now, it didn’t seem likely. But events in the UK perhaps suggest otherwise.

Pope Francis may have just made his most important personnel decision yet. In a shakeup of the Congregation for Bishops Francis’ decided to give Cardinal Raymond Burke’s seat to Cardinal Donald Wuerl. This move is bound to trouble even further those worried about Francis’ papacy, but isn’t as radical as it might appear. It shows a Pope who’s determined to remake the Vatican hierarchy—within limits.

Canada has its oil sands, the United States has its shale boom, and now Mexico has its energy reforms. Add those three recent energy trends together, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a North American energy powerhouse. A new report from the Energy Information Administration paints an even rosier energy future for the US and North America.

The Japanese government set forth its latest National Security Strategy today, a comprehensive 10-year plan to build up its defense forces, invest in new weapons, ships, and aircraft, and prepare for conflict in an increasingly hostile neighborhood. The new strategy will focus on defending Japan’s far-flung islands, with new amphibious transport ships and surveillance technology high on the shopping list. North Korea, China, and Russia are named as possible threats to Japan’s security, and the strategy document calls on the US not to abandon its role as the provider of security and stability in the region.

It’s beginning to look like Detroit’s bankruptcy will come in with a pretty hefty price tag. Despite being effectively broke, the city has already spent an astonishing $28 million on fees for lawyers and consultants brought on to assist with the process, some of whom are earning nearly $200,000 per month. The lesson for other cities: Bankruptcy is expensive and should be avoided if at all possible.

Violence erupted again in South Sudan on Monday, with bouts of gunfire reported across the capital and claims by the President that a group of soldiers attempted to overthrow the government. The country remains one of the most unstable in the world, yet its sizable oil wealth has made it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and an attractive country for foreign investment.

If you separate out men from women, women in America are roughly as upwardly mobile as women anywhere else in the world. It’s only when you add men back in and compare the whole US population to populations abroad that things look bleak. Declining economic mobility looks less like an American problem than an American male problem. But men’s gradual slide into poverty, crime, and social isolation has been largely met with silence.