Every man, woman and child in Chicago is carrying $18,596 in pension debt, the largest per-person liability in the nation and nearly that of Puerto Rico and New York City combined.

According to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, half of American Sports fans “see some aspect of the supernatural at play in sports,” meaning that they either pray to God to help their team, have thought their team was cursed at some point in time, or believe that God plays a role in determining the outcome of sporting events.

The Detroit bankruptcy is giving some Wall Street firms a splitting headache. The embattled city’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr is pursuing a lawsuit that would let the city stop making payments on a $144 billion pension deal centering on what the city’s lawyers are now calling “sham” contracts.

Japanese scientists have just announced an incredible discovery: normal mice blood cells can be transformed into pluripotent (all-purpose) stem cells just by dipping them in acid.

Heads continue to roll at the Vatican, with Pope Francis appointing a new head of the Financial Information Agency, an anti-corruption body launched by Pope Benedict XIV.Time will tell whether the outgoing or the ingoing group are the real reformers, but the progress already been made of the bank give some hope that positive change may be coming to the Curia.

A new report claims that at least 50 Jihadists from Indonesia have made the trip to Syria to join the fight against President Bashar al-Assad, and that number is expected to grow. For Indonesian national security, this is bad news.

WRM’s latest piece in the WSJ explores how Western countries can still promote democracy in an age of domestic exhaustion and international chaos.

There’s a natural desire to withdraw from the sheer quantity of online content floating around, but political thinking requires that we resist the desire to flee from opinions altogether.

Iran and Turkey took significant steps towards improving relations with each other on Wednesday, despite Washington’s protests. Whereas before Ankara might have waited for Washington’s green light on such a move, today it goes ahead without much of a second thought.

The death toll from three days of fighting in Bangui, capital of the Central Africa Republic, stands at 35 with 65 injured, announced the Red Cross today. The fresh violence comes following a recent inauguration of a new head of state, Catherine Samba-Panza, a posting meant to quell a savage conflict in the country that has left over 2,000 dead.