It appears that researchers have managed to make a reasonably simple and practical invisibility cloaking system to work. While it’s not yet clear whether this is a serious breakthrough or more in the category of interesting parlor trick, it is a useful as a prod to thinking about the kind of innovation we need to encourage as a society.

In October, Wal-Mart will offer cheap bank accounts to lower-income Americans previously cut out off from the banking system and forced into predatory loans. This is a much-needed service that could help many escape further cycles of debt; will Wal-Mart’s evils never cease?

The French rail workers union went on strike to protest the punishment of two of its members for being drunk on the job. No, really.

A Pew poll taken since 2006 has found consistent declines in the percentage of Americans who favor church involvement in politics, but this year it has gone up by nine points. Religious affiliation is becoming a powerful dividing line in American life.

A new legal challenge to California’s ride-share companies shows once again that blue model bureaucrats are getting more creative in their war on the service.

Overweening devotion to ideals of technological and scientific progress has many universities churning out a utilitarian kind of education, one more suited to machines than human beings.

The ACA’s cost-controlling measures have fallen on hard times this week. Patients are revolting against one measure, and providers haven’t done very well with another.

Vladimir Putin has been running circles around the West’s leaders because they still haven’t learned the lesson that Putin thinks in terms of power and can only be managed on those terms.

Under the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, state governments are now charging the program’s users a unprecedented premium. These premiums are a example of how expanding coverage before controlling costs will only shift, not eliminate, the distortions blocking health care access for many Americans.

Hungary announced that it will stop reselling Russian gas to Ukraine just days after Gazprom’s CEO met with the country’s Prime Minister. Divide-and-conquer is an old and very effective tactic being put to very good use in Europe these days.