The “BRIC” label has never been very useful, but it’s always seemed particularly dubious when applied to Russia. India, China, and Brazil share as many differences as they do similarities, but at least they’re all indisputably more powerful than they were decades ago: Russia, on the other hand, is a country in decline.Nowhere is this […]

A new report warns that as the shale revolution pumps new life into American energy production, it also leaves states vulnerable to global energy price swings. Between 2010 and 2012, oil and gas industry jobs grew 10 times faster than overall American jobs. Fossil fuels’ share of America’s GDP has nearly tripled since 1999. But states replete with […]

A new app that allows for real time data on prices for everyday products could have big implications for health care. Price inflation for consumer products like milk and eggs is usually calculated by the Labor department, which collects data on prices once a month and releases a monthly report. Now, the WSJ reports, Premise Data […]

According to a senior officer in the Nigerian army, more than 950 prisoners have died in Nigerian detention facilities so far this year. Amnesty International reports that mass burials of people killed in prison are commonplace in the city of Maiduguri. Most of the dead were members of the Islamic insurgency, Boko Haram. The Telegraph reports: […]

The mild optimism in India following the resurgence of the rupee was bluntly quashed as wholesale price inflation for the month of September hit its highest point since the beginning of the year. The First Post reports: A massive increase in food prices has been a major driver of wholesale price inflation. Onion prices rose by […]

True innovation seems obvious in retrospect, though at the time it’s anything but. Here’s one such example out of Australia: two young engineers are planning to launch an army of drones to revolutionize freight and shipping. They are planning  a pilot program with an Australian textbook rental company: Zookal will use Flirtey to send parcels […]

The change in tone and what is billed as a significant new proposal from Iran have led to a lot of optimism in the press lately. Are we near a resolution to this crisis at last?Certainly we, like many others, hope that this dispute is on the road to a peaceful resolution. The US and […]

Fresh off the news that Stockton, California doesn’t plan to touch a dollar of its pensions in its bankruptcy plan, Reuters reports that Moody’s has plunged the city’s pension bonds to the depths of junk status: Moody’s Investors Service lowered the pension obligation bonds of Stockton, California, to ‘Ca’ from ‘Caa3’ on Monday and changed […]

The third week of enrollment in the federal exchanges opened with these strong words from one of the ACA’s biggest supporters, Ezra Klein: “So far, the Affordable Care Act’s launch has been a failure. Not ‘troubled.’ Not ‘glitchy.’ A failure…The magnitude of this failure is stunning. “Klein offers five takes on the ACA’s persistent rollout problems, […]

I just spent two weeks traveling across Europe, visiting France, Italy, Germany, and Romania. Everywhere I went, people wanted to talk about Washington’s dispiriting budget shenanigans, the European implications of the “pivot to Asia” and the mess in the Middle East. But while the Europeans are more or less united on the subject of America’s […]