After a full and fair trial, abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell was convicted this week on three counts of first-degree murder in the killing of three babies whose necks he “snipped,” as well as involuntary manslaughter in the death of patient Karnamaya Mongar. Gosnell, who performed hundreds of gruesome and macabre abortions out of his Women’s […]

Following its ballyhooed success as host of the 2010 International Conference on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been selected to chair this month’s UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament. The 65-member forum, previously chaired by such arms control leaders as North Korea, “is charged with negotiating international regulations for biological and chemical weapons, […]

Yes, you’re reading that graph right. Texas—oil hungry, SUV-driving, fracking-friendly Texas—reduced its carbon emissions more than the usual green suspects of California, Germany, and Europe. The Energy Information Administration released a report yesterday full of emissions data for the fifty states over the first decade of this century. The state with the biggest absolute emissions […]

There are a lot of people in the Obama administration right now who think that T.S. Eliot got it wrong in “The Waste Land.” May, not April, is the cruelest month for an increasingly embattled White House.The trouble began late last week when reports began to surface that a rogue Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati targeted […]

The Burma-China pipeline project has hit a snag just a few months before completion, Burmese officials report. Because the pipeline crosses territory where the state is battling armed independence armies, the pipeline won’t become operational for some time.The delay highlights the importance of the Strait of Malacca for energy-hungry Asian countries. The sheer amount of oil that […]

Young men will be the biggest losers in the transition to Obamacare, according to a new report by the actuarial and consulting firm Milliman. The report estimates that males as a whole will see an 11 percent increase in insurance premiums, while females as a whole will see a nine percent decrease. Men under 40 will face insurance hikes […]

After sixty years of growth, it looks like the American appetite for driving may finally be sated. A new report from US PIRG shows Americans are driving fewer miles for the first time in history, largely thanks to the changing habits of apparently car-shy millenials: Young people drove 23 percent fewer miles in 2009 than […]

Congress is considering legislation that seeks to hold American higher ed institutions accountable for results. On Thursday, a group of Senators proposed the “Student Right to Know Before You Go Act”, a bill that would create a federal database containing the career outcomes of graduates for every college in the country.Similar proposals have been tossed […]

The Pew Research Center’s latest survey on Europeans’ attitudes toward EU politics and economics brings across one message loud and clear: Europeans are not happy. People from every major country report extreme dissatisfaction with the economy and their political leaders. Increasingly, they also share a sense that the European Union and economic integration were mistakes for […]

It’s only Tuesday, yet it’s already shaping into a rough week for OPEC. Yesterday we heard that the American shale boom was hurting the petrochemicals industries of OPEC’s Middle Eastern members. Today a new International Energy Agency report suggests that the US may soon steal OPEC’s thunder in conventional energy as well. The report predicts that rising […]