Thinking of taking out a big loan to pay for college? Before you do, take a look at these numbers on student loan debt from the Guardian. They paint a pretty depressing picture of post-college life.The most notable number is, of course, the total level of student debt in the US, which is now just over […]

The heat is on for traditional hospitals and doctors’ offices. Walgreens just became the first chain store to offer diagnosis and treatment services for chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes. Kaiser Health News reports: Walgreens officials say they will have nurse practitioners and physician assistants at more than 300 Take Care Clinics in 18 states and […]

The jobs numbers are out for March, and they’re a doozy: only 88,000 new jobs were added, with unemployment inching down to 7.6 percent. That may not sound so bad until you look at the context. This figure is significantly down from the 268,000 jobs added in February, and is far more dire than the […]

If you want an indicator of how confused green policy is in Europe, look no further than the fact that EU policy treats burning wood as an energy source of the future. This madness stems from the EU’s attempt to derive 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020; burning wood—or biomass, as […]

Editors’ note: What follows is the fifth part of an exchange on Russian-Western relations following from David Kramer and Lilia Shevtsova’s monthly column at The American Interest Online (see especially their February 21 essay, “Here We Go Again: Falling for the Russia Trap”). On March 12, Thomas Graham responded with his essay, “In Defense of a Strategic […]

The heir to the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty in India, Rahul Gandhi, tried today to compete with the BJP’s Narendra Modi on Modi’s home turf: the business world. By many accounts, he failed to impress. Addressing a gathering of Indian business tycoons in Delhi, his speech was vague and long on imagery and empty clichés, suggesting that Rahul has few […]

Is Ahmadinejad changing his tune as his presidency winds down? That may be the story we’ll be hearing from our media mavens in the coming weeks as Iran’s presidential election shifts into high gear.Iran’s President is campaigning hard for Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, his spiritual mentor and father-in-law of his son, to succeed him. According to the New […]

A string of violent attacks against elderly Armenians in an historically Armenian quarter of Istanbul (one woman has already died of her wounds) is making headlines in Turkey. The despicable violence is forcing Turks to do some soul-searching on their troubled history of mistreating Armenians. The New York Times reports: [T]he attacks have awakened fears—rooted in past episodes of repression […]

Law schools are facing a number of problems at the moment, but most of them boil down to one simple issue: they are training too many lawyers. So says law professor Eric Posner in Slate, tracing the problem back to the rapid growth of law schools in the boom years of the 1990s: The crisis could have […]

Jesus began his ministry by turning water into wine. Pope Francis has started his with an equally astounding feat: winning over the editors of the New York Times, who have published a raft of fawning stories highlighting Francis’s papal humility.Judging from a recent Pew Forum poll, the editors of the Times aren’t alone in their praise of the new pope. More than 84 […]