Detroit has been skirting bankruptcy for a while now, and today Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr met with the city’s creditors to discuss plans to restructure the city’s obligations. Creditors would have to take a hit on any such deal, but it’s stunning to see just how big it could be: The New York Times reports that […]

Religion used to give Americans a sense that a successful life involves more than status and material gain. As its cultural authority has waned, our standards have become more worldly. So argues David Brooks in an insightful column on the connection between the decline of religion and inequality: [Under Judeo-Christianity] your place is not determined by […]

After posting solid growth for most of this year, the Chinese economy has taken on a darker outlook as the yuan weakens against the dollar and foreign investment dries up. The yuan’s “recent decline indicates that international investors are taking a gloomier view of China’s slowing economy,” reports the WSJ.Meanwhile, the big banks are cutting […]

So the Administration announced yesterday that it was going to arm the Syrian rebels, and it’s moving some military forces around, too. Commentators are nearly unanimous in concluding that we’re edging much closer now to involvement in this civil war, one with major and fairly large regional implications. Some folks are singing the talkin’ Syria […]

A number of medical devices are vulnerable to cyberattacks that could render them ineffective or worse, according to recent studies. Now regulations are underway that would require manufacturers to build cybersecurity features into their devices before recieving FDA approval. The Washington Post reports: Computer viruses and other malware increasingly are infecting equipment such as hospital computers […]

Nicaraguan lawmakers approved a plan by a Chinese investment company to build a massive canal from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific yesterday, even though the plan contains no specific route and virtually no details on financing or economic feasibility. Nicaragua is one of the western hemisphere’s poorest countries, and its government is dominated by supporters of President […]

The number of health care clinics located in big chain stores like Walgreens and CVS will double by 2015. That’s just one data point cited by Jonathan Cohn in an excellent piece yesterday for The New Republic. Cohn argues that the rise of big box clinics is transforming the health care system—and it’s not yet clear whether […]

Conflict over oil is flaring up once again between North Sudan and South Sudan. Today, the North accused the South of aiding rebels in attacking a pipeline in a disputed region on the border between the two states. This comes on the heels of an announcement earlier this week that North Sudan would be closing the oil […]

Who owns Okinawa Island, roughly 400 miles south of the main Japanese islands and the largest of the Ryukyu group of volcanic islands that stretches from Japan to Taiwan? That depends on who you ask. To most of the world Okinawa is thoroughly Japanese. But look far enough back in time and the facts are not […]

US oil production jumped a staggering 14 percent last year, the largest increase in American history. A new report from BP shows that shale oil helped fuel the increase. American oil production had been steadily falling for more than two decades until 2009, when fracking and horizontal well drilling opened up new sources of oil […]