The story of Detroit’s decline has been told and retold so many times now that you’d be forgiven for assuming there’s nothing more to say. But the Detroit Free Press has put together a new, comprehensive financial history of the city from 1950 to the present, gleaned from tens of thousands of pages of archival data on the city’s […]

Two years ago it seemed as though the Doha Round of trade talks were dead and the WTO was in critical condition. But with the organization’s biennial meeting in Bali approaching, there are new signs of life.With much of the low-hanging fruit already picked, the WTO has had trouble getting a diverse group of member states […]

Obamacare supporters have been touting California’s lower-than-expected premiums as a sign of ACA success for months now. That claim is bogus; many people are still facing premium price hikes over their current rates. Now new data suggests that the tradeoffs required to bring premiums below the expected average will be very hard to live with. LA […]

The way Tony Abbott was recently elected prime minister of Australia could have implications for center-right parties elsewhere. His coalition softened its image and won votes with a proposed parental leave program much more generous than that of its competition; in doing so, writes Reihan Salam, it proved that family-friendly conservatism can work: [T]he proposal, which aims to […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been racking up small- and medium-sized wins lately (Edward Snowden, Syria), but do these make up for the fact that his biggest ambition is falling apart? Putin’s dream of creating a Eurasian Union, transforming the rigor mortis of modern day Russia back into a Soviet-style superpower, has hit one roadblock […]

On January 8, RINs, ethanol credits available to fuel refiners looking to meet government-mandated biofuel production targets, were trading at 7 cents a credit. The price of credits spiked sharply this year, hitting $1.33 in late July before settling back down to roughly 60 cents a credit today.Here’s why: while biofuels targets have risen every […]

Zanzibar was once a tourist paradise, but sectarian violence is rapidly turning it into a no-go zone. The BBC reports that Rev. Joseph Mwagambwa, an elderly Roman Catholic priest, was attacked with acid and is now being treated at a local hospital. More: It follows a similar attack on two young British women there last month.Tensions […]

Is Germany up for grabs again after eight years of Merkel? A new group of polls suggest that it is, as Merkel’s conservative coalition has been steadily losing support in the run up to next week’s vote. As recently as last month, many observers believed Merkel would come out ahead without much trouble, but now […]

After years of claiming that it doesn’t exist, the New York Times has found evidence of voter fraud: a political machine organizing unqualified voters to swing an election in Alabama. Of course there are some twists: The turmoil began some weeks earlier. It raised the specter of the Machine, a secret society representing a league of select […]

Malaysia’s state-owned oil company Petronas is backing out of a multi-billion dollar venture to help develop Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt, one of the world’s largest heavy oil deposits. Carabobo-1 was the flagship Orinoco development project, and Petronas had an 11 percent stake in it. The FT paints the backdrop to the decision: The projects have been slow to […]