Here’s a graph, based on work by Colorado University’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, that shows the extent to which the world’s mainstream media covered climate change over the past decade:Notice the spike in late 2009—a result of the disastrous Copenhagen climate summit—and the gradual tapering off over the past four years. Here’s […]

Thanks to Detroit’s bankruptcy, the state of Michigan has just seen its lowest level of bond sales in more than a decade, says Bloomberg. More and more municipalities have joined Saginaw County and Battle Creek in postponing bond sales for more favorable times, and interest rates are climbing for the cities that are still borrowing. The […]

As we all watch events unfold today regarding the possibility of intervention in Syria, it’s important to keep a bigger regional strategic picture in mind. And taken as a whole, Western policy toward the Middle East in almost complete disarray.Take this nugget, for example: Last Friday, the EU’s general court struck down sanctions against a […]

It’s tough to top Jeff Bezos’s purchase of the Washington Post when it comes to eye-catching media purchases, but Politico publisher Robert Allbritton is making a push of his own with his purchase of Capital New York, an online news site based in NYC. Like Bezos, Allbritton has ambitious plans for his new purchase; he […]

Getting rid of biofuel programs would cut Europe’s food costs in half by 2020, and lower global food prices by 15 percent. That’s according to a new report, commissioned by the EU’s own Joint Research Center (JRC), released ahead of a critical European Parliament vote on Wednesday to cap biofuels’ contributions to the EU’s 2020 […]

Since Shinzo Abe entered office, Japan and South Korea haven’t gotten along. His administration’s nationalism and hawkishness, as well as its apparent blindness to the suffering of Japan’s colonial subjects in the past century, have certainly taken a toll on the official relationship. The clearest sign that all was not warm and fuzzy was new […]

The AFL-CIO, the biggest alliance of labor unions in America, is feeling feeble these days. You can tell because lately it’s been trying to regain some of its old clout by partnering with non-labor progressive groups, effectively bringing millions of non-union members into the fold. The problem is that some of the unions under the […]

When Obama was campaigning on behalf of his health care law one mantra was repeated ad nauseam: If you like your current plan, you can keep it. To put it gently, this hasn’t turned out to be the case, as more and more employers are opting to drop health coverage for their employees, pushing them onto […]

The Sacramento Bee got its hands on 14 years of pension data from CalPERS and did some analysis. What it found should both surprise no one and cause outrage at the same time: on average, payout to new retirees in California doubled between 1999 and 2012, with police and firefighter pensions almost tripling in that period.Even […]

Thanks to fracking, the US has plenty of cheap natural gas. In fact, it has so much that it’s now planning the construction of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities (just last decade the US was looking to build more LNG import infrastructure). Last month, the Obama administration approved plans for America’s third LNG […]