A team of Italian scientists just released a meta-study that looks at more than 1,700 reports on genetically modified crops over the past decade; by and large, it gives the technology a clean bill of health. Real Clear Science reports: Led by Alessandro Nicolia, an applied biologist at the University of Perugia in Italy, the team collected […]

Whether and how people marry is as important to rising inequality as economic factors, and the media class is starting to realize it. The latest person to join the marriage-and-inequality camp is Derek Thompson, senior editor of The Atlantic’s business channel. His piece yesterday points to two social factors driving inequality: the rise of single parenthood among […]

Keeping up with its tit for tat policy, the State Department expelled three Venezuelan diplomats today. The move is reciprocation for the three US diplomats who were run out of Caracas on Monday on accusations of sabotage. But President Maduro’s face-saving gambit may not be so fruitful after all. The NYT has more: “The government […]

Yet another battle over pensions is raging, this time in Vallejo, CA, a city of 115,000. When Vallejo went bankrupt in 2008 with an $18 million deficit, its annual pension payments were $8.82 million (11 percent of the general fund). Since then it has laid off police and firefighters, slashed retiree health benefits, and cut […]

Many criticisms of the charter school movement are pretty unconvincing, coming from those with a large stake in the status quo. Charter schools are not an underhanded attempt to dismantle teachers unions and privatize the public education system. Others, however, are more difficult to dismiss. Most notably, many critics have pointed to the fact that charter […]

Brits will be paying dearly to heat their homes this winter, a fact that will increase scrutiny on the country’s domestic energy policies. Heating bills are already something of a political football—the opposition Labour party has an ill-conceived populist pander plan to freeze energy prices if elected in 2015. But supply disruptions in Norway, one […]

People don’t like environmentalists, and that personal disdain is hurting the green cause. That’s the gist of a new study, which found that the stereotypes people hold about environmental activists make them much less likely to adopt the kinds of behaviors greens promote, such as recycling. Pacific Standard reports: In one [study], 140 Americans…read an article about climate […]

Controlling costs while delivering better health outcomes is the holy grail of health care reform. But what if that holy grail isn’t as hard to find as we thought? Reason profiles Samaritan Ministries, a private group of Christians who cover each other’s medical care directly, without using insurance as a third-party payer. When anyone in […]

Imran Khan is the chief of Pakistan’s PTI party, but secular Pakistanis have a different name for him: Taliban Khan. His stubborn insistence on peace talks with the Taliban, despite the carnage that the group has unleashed on Pakistan’s terrorized citizens, has led critics to label him an “accomplice” to the Taliban’s actions.The charge isn’t […]

China has detained an expert on Sino-Japanese relations, Zhu Jianrong, a professor at a Japanese university near Tokyo, on what could turn out to be allegations of espionage. The move has worried expatriate academics in both China and Japan, as well as ratcheting up Sino-Japanese tensions at an already difficult time. The New York Times: The […]