Puerto Rico is careening toward default, special bankruptcy, a backdoor bailout, or something else that will force a serious debt restructure on the troubled territory. That’s the lesson from an excellent piece in Forbes that explains how Puerto Rico has charted the course to blue model destruction. After much hemming and hawing the last ten […]

When Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio takes office on January 1, New York City’s charter schools are going to encounter some trouble. De Blasio has made it very clear that unlike his predecessor, his administration would like to stem the growth of charter schools, arguing that the city has as many as it needs. Specifically, he has […]

President François Hollande is now the most unpopular French leader of the Fifth Republic. Opinion polls put his approval rating at just 21 percent. French citizens find his strict tax plans deeply upsetting and fear that his policies are weakening the economy and selling out the country to Brussels and Berlin. “Opinion poll after opinion poll […]

Jeff Bezos unveiled Amazon’s next disruptive delivery service on 60 Minutes last night: a fleet of flying autonomous drones capable of delivering packages within 30 minutes of ordering. Amazon Prime Air, as the project is called, is currently capable of delivering packages weighing 5 pounds or less within a 10 mile radius of Amazon’s distribution […]

One tool Americans have for managing their eldercare expenses may be quietly fading away right when it is most needed. Long-term-care insurance allows Americans to pay an annual premium in exchange for coverage of eldercare expenses in nursing homes, assisted living programs, and even home care situations. But the WSJ reports this insurance is quickly becoming […]

While many of us were enjoying Thanksgiving meals with our loved ones (and maybe even deep-frying turkeys), the chattering classes were chewing over the interim deal signed with Iran last week. The deal seemed to signal some kind of turning point, but in this week’s essay, we asked: a turning point toward what? [O]ur first […]

Iran won’t abandon its nuclear energy ambitions in pursuit of a nuclear deal, according to leaders in Tehran over the weekend. Iran’s top nuclear official Ali Akbar Salehi reportedly considers the abandonment of his country’s Arak heavy water nuclear reactor a “red line” that won’t be crossed in pursuit of easing Western sanctions. Not only […]

[Thai anti-government protesters shake hands with policemen outside the Government house during a demonstration in Bangkok on December 1, 2013. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.]

MOOCs have their fair share of critics, but they generally fall back on the same few arguments: MOOCs offer a low-quality facsimile of in-person education, dropout rates are high, student interaction is low, and it’s difficult to assess how much students have actually learned. But over at the Financial Times Edward Luce attacks MOOCs from […]

A new research project at the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute shows us that the disruptive possibilities of 3D printing have only begun to be imagined. Live Science reports that CII scientists are embarking on an attempt to 3D print a full human heart from human cells: The heart represents one of the most ambitious goals for researchers working to […]