John Kerry has been making the rounds claiming that Obama can bomb Syria even if Congress votes against it. The legalities are disputed among constitutional lawyers, but telling the world that the Obama administration reserves the right to bomb Syria regardless of what Congress says is probably not the smartest way to lobby for votes.Some […]

Under Australia’s complicated counting system, final results of the country’s general election will not be known for some time, but it is already clear that Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party have lost. Rudd has conceded defeat and announced that he will not fight to stay on as leader of the bitterly factionalized party. Outside […]

The Democratic National Committee has launched a new Obamacare publicity campaign with a neat but misleading infographic meant to show that the ACA is working. Two of the graphic’s claims bear closer examination. First, it says that, in every state with approved ACA premium rates, we’re seeing lower premiums. Given that only 13 states have […]

The latest Snowden revelations out from the New York Times and the Guardian make for compelling reading; at the same time, they’re not the least bit surprising.They’re compelling insofar as they outline just how successful the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ have been in compromising and circumventing the cryptographic standards behind most of the Internet. By a mix […]

After years on the road as a one-man climate change hype machine, Al Gore has lately gone awfully silent. So Buzzfeed decided to check in on the current state of the man and his nonprofit advocacy group, the Climate Reality Project (CRP).Five short years ago, the mainstream media widely covered the CRP as it attempted to make […]

From Peter Thiel to Sergey Brin to Sebastian Thrun, Stanford University has incubated more than its share of alumni who have gone on to become titans of industry and finance. But the university is not content to rest on these laurels; it has just announced that it will begin directly investing in startups created by […]

An overwhelming number (74 percent) of Indian business executives want Narendra Modi to be the country’s next Prime Minister, while only a scant few (7 percent) prefer Rahul Gandhi, according to a poll by India’s Economic Times.Modi is the controversial Chief Minister of Gujarat and the presumptive PM candidate for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, whose main rival, Rahul, […]

Start-ups are the key to American economy, and they’re the key to American health care as well. Wired profiles several new start-up companies that could help dramatically improve service delivery and price transparency. There’s HealthTap, that is trying to bring back “the village doctor” and “house calls” by digital consultations. Castlight Health offers price comparison services. […]

At the ongoing G20 summit in Russia, Syria seems to have split word leaders into roughly three camps: those for doing something (the US, the UK, Canada, France, and Turkey), those staunchly opposed (Russia and China), and those who think some level of international consensus is critical before anything is done. Germany and Italy in […]

Back in August, German Chancellor Angela Merkel caused a ruckus in Europe by suggesting that Brussels might need to devolve some power back to EU member states. New polling data released by Open Europe suggests that Merkel isn’t the only German ready for less Europe. Across the board, German voters remain opposed to expanded commitments to the EU and other Eurozone […]