The world’s largest ship just left its dry dock in South Korea. More accurately, the hull for the world’s first floating liquified natural gas (FLNG) vessel was floated for the first time this morning. The Prelude, as it’s called, is noteworthy for more than just its size (in fact, bigger FLNG ships are already under construction): it’s a key that will unlock “stranded” reserves of offshore natural gas.

As the rolling pensions crisis has amply shown, America’s struggling cities and states excel at nothing so much as procrastination—dithering, passing legislative half-measures—anything to avoid tackling their problems head-on. Illinois’ interminable pension reform saga is the most obvious example of this, but Springfield is hardly alone.

Washington needs to get its ducks in a row. The different branches of the US government can’t be sending out mixed messages. Our allies in Asia are watching very closely to gauge the depth of the US commitment to stability in Asia. Diplomatic missteps, confusion, mixed messages, and incompetence will only further convince our allies that the US ship has sailed.

The single payer pivot is going gangbusters over at the New York Times. The Grey Lady had two pieces out yesterday on health care prices, and the mix of the two shows a paper, and an intelligentsia, deeply confused about health care.

Public sector unions have been handed a stinging defeat this morning in Detroit. After nearly a month of waiting, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court ruled that the city is eligible for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, declaring that it may cut pension benefits as part of the procedure—despite the unions’ argument that the state constitution forbids such cuts.

Japan is rather desperate for domestic energy sources these days. After shuttering its nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the island country—largely bereft of oil and gas—has had to dramatically ramp up imports of liquified natural gas (LNG) to meet its energy needs, and is paying dearly for the privilege.But there’s good […]

For all the talk about the MOOC backlash setting in, the past few months have actually been an extremely fertile time for innovations in online learning, particularly when it comes to partnerships between MOOC purveyors and private companies. We’ve already discussed LinkedIn’s plans to create a “direct-to-profile” credential for completing courses, but as Forbes notes, this […]

After years of constant dithering and more failed deals than we’d care to count, lawmakers from both parties claim they’ve finally found the solution to Illinois’ worsening pension crisis. The deal, which was first announced last week, would require the state to contribute more to the state’s underfunded pension system, while at the same time […]

China claims not just the air and the sea off its coasts, but what lies underneath the water as well. In the past that has meant Beijing has laid claim to any deposits of oil and gas on the seafloor, as well as the fish in disputed waters off the coast; now it means shipwrecks […]

In November 2012, a study was published in Elsevier’s journal Food and Chemical Toxicology that purported to show that genetically modified corn produced tumors in rats. The report, led by French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini, was controversial from the get-go. The EU’s food safety authority criticized the study’s methodology, and hundreds of scientists signed a petition requesting the […]