Motorola Mobility, the phonemaker Google purchased last year, announced yesterday that it will manufacture its newest phone, the Moto X, in the United States (just outside of Fort Worth, Texas). Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside teased the new smartphone at the D11 conference, but the made-in-America buzz trumped the latest and greatest features it’s purported […]

Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan and now the chairman of a project on national service at the Aspen Institute (and, full disclosure, someone WRM has known and admired for many years), has an eloquent call for national service in the WSJ today. He laments the low number of Americans who serve […]

In recent months the Defense Department has been reviewing possible spending cuts to the Pentagon’s budget. On Monday, more than twenty military specialists from think tanks across the political spectrum will release a letter begging Congress to cut the fat and spare the muscle. Hoping to leave space in the budget for vital military priorities, representatives from […]

After nearly a decade of drought, Israel has decided to make its freshwater rather than wait in vain for enough of it to fall from the sky. The Sorek desalination plant opening next month will be the largest facility of its kind in the world. Once it’s operational, Israel’s four desalination plants will be capable […]

Law school students should have the right to work for no pay. So argues American Bar Association President Laurel G. Belows, who urged the Labor Department to stop scrutinizing law firms for taking on unpaid interns. The Wall Street Journal reports: [Belows] also said a ban on such internships would curb “access for future employment […]

The wild success of the fracking industry has caught the attention of the big dogs in the energy industry. That’s good news for all involved, because the evidence shows that the bigger the companies get, the safer they frack. GE, a company that historically has had little interest in the oil and gas industry, is the […]

Russian-made S-300 antiaircraft missile launchers, considered one of the most advanced aerial defense systems in the world, have started arriving in Syria. Butcher Assad apparently gave an interview to Hezbollah’s TV station announcing that the first shipment of the weapons had arrived. The Israeli government, which sees the S-300s as a direct threat to national […]

“God” thinks the US shale revolution isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Andy Hall, an oil trader whose savvy has earned him that divine nickname, is pointing to the tendency of output to decline precipitously over the life of a shale well as a sign that fracking’s capacity to permanently reshape the global energy […]

American business schools are about to face some stiff competition from abroad. After years of looking up to the US model, international programs are borrowing from them and catching up: European graduate management programs received more than 90,000 Graduate Management Admission Test score reports from applicants during the 2012 testing year, marking both an all-time high […]

Dr. Michael Ciampi of South Portland, Maine, might do more to reform health care than the entire Obama administration. On April 1, Ciampi decided to stop taking insurance at his primary care practice, charging people instead a fixed, out-of-pocket price for all services. By cutting out the insurance middlemen on all claims, Ciampi will save both […]