Unlike Machiavelli’s The Prince, Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince isn’t usually on reading lists for policymakers and international relations scholars. But it should be.

Russia’s currency continues to devalue, as a combination of sanctions, instability, and the market pressures of a global oil and gas glut push the Russian economy to the brink.

A new study suggests that we’ve been underestimating the amount of heat stored in the upper levels of our planet’s oceans by 24 to 55 percent. Just a reminder: Climate science is anything but settled.

In the absence of Kim Jong Un, who hasn’t been seen in public in more than a month, North Korean policy seems to be shifting course in some heartening ways. Anyone who predicts whether that will continue is merely speculating, but a non-nuclear DPRK which plays nice with Seoul sure would be good news.

Brazil’s incumbent President Dilma Rousseff has made into in a second round run-off, where she has a good chance of beating her opponent, the conservative Aecio Neves. A second Rousseff term, however, might not be very good for her party’s political future.

Wal-Mart has just unveiled its new plan to impoverish the American people: providing licensed agents to help individuals navigate the confusing health care marketplace. Absolutely shameless.

People like to blame their current statesmen when the world takes a nasty turn. But this global meltdown has its roots with the generation of leaders at the helm in the wake of the collapse of communism.

The failures of handling Ebola in Dallas, small and large, point to the fact that 13 years after 9/11 we are still woefully unprepared for a biowarfare attack.

Marilynne Robinson has, throughout her essays and fiction, looped an iron chord around the twinned facts of faith and the moral self.

The situation is worse than you might think. And with parliamentary elections just around the corner, the stakes couldn’t be higher.