The number of health care clinics located in big chain stores like Walgreens and CVS will double by 2015. That’s just one data point cited by Jonathan Cohn in an excellent piece yesterday for The New Republic. Cohn argues that the rise of big box clinics is transforming the health care system—and it’s not yet clear whether […]

Conflict over oil is flaring up once again between North Sudan and South Sudan. Today, the North accused the South of aiding rebels in attacking a pipeline in a disputed region on the border between the two states. This comes on the heels of an announcement earlier this week that North Sudan would be closing the oil […]

Who owns Okinawa Island, roughly 400 miles south of the main Japanese islands and the largest of the Ryukyu group of volcanic islands that stretches from Japan to Taiwan? That depends on who you ask. To most of the world Okinawa is thoroughly Japanese. But look far enough back in time and the facts are not […]

US oil production jumped a staggering 14 percent last year, the largest increase in American history. A new report from BP shows that shale oil helped fuel the increase. American oil production had been steadily falling for more than two decades until 2009, when fracking and horizontal well drilling opened up new sources of oil […]

With each passing year, people are becoming warier and warier of Obamacare. WSJ has the results of a new survey on attitudes toward the ACA conducted by Mercer. It found that only 9 percent of companies now believe Obamacare won’t raise their health care costs significantly, compared to 20 percent last year and 25 percent in […]

The news from the White House today brings the United States significantly closer to yet another Middle Eastern war. Concluding that “forces loyal” to the brutal Syrian dictator Assad had used chemical weapons against rebels, President Obama is stepping up the “scope and scale” of aid to the forces seeking to drive Assad from power. […]

Today’s Supreme Court ruling that naturally occurring human genes are not patentable may be the most important of the year so far. The unanimous decision reversed a lower court’s judgment that a company could hold patents on individual genes, effectively preventing anyone else from doing any research or testing on these genes without the patent […]

California Governor Jerry Brown’s decision not to spend the state’s surplus on new programs is looking smarter by the day, as the state’s pensions crisis is even uglier than official numbers have indicated. Both Moody’s and the Government Accounting Standards Board have spent the past few months making changes to the way local governments report […]

The Greek government’s decision to close the state broadcaster created a political crisis today as thousands of disgruntled employees and sympathetic union members went on strike, causing public transportation to completely shut down and flights to be canceled in Athens and other cities. At least two smaller political parties threatened to leave the coalition government […]

Yesterday Angela Merkel warned that green energy policies are weakening Germany’s competitive advantage in the global economy. Germany, like the rest of Europe, is paying a lot more for electricity today than it did seven years ago. The country has made large investments in solar and wind power, more expensive energy sources than oil and […]