AirBnB, an app that allows people to rent out their homes, has recently announced that it will vet all potential renters to determine if they’re being honest about who they are. Pivoting off this announcement, a piece in the FT looks at the increasing push for identity verification online: It took Facebook to change everything. Suddenly it […]

College grads and young families, take note: the best place to start your life might be in a state you least expect. Those looking to start a business or launch a career might want to consult the Enterprise State Dashboard, a data survey put together by the US Chamber of Commerce. The interactive report ranks […]

Anecdotal observation tells us that working mothers often drop their careers when their work hours become too demanding. This theory has now been confirmed by a study led by Youngjoo Cha, an assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University. Her research found that once average working hours exceed 50 hours a week, women with children […]

Argentines are now paying over nine pesos for every dollar on the country’s currency black market. La Nacion reports that rampant peso inflation and tight controls on the US dollar are pushing prices up on the “blue dollar” higher than it’s ever been. In this graph from the story, the red line is the price of the […]

A number of universities have been integrating online coursework into their programs in recent years. But Duke University has just pulled out of an online education consortium at the behest of its faculty, the New York Times reports: While [Duke provost Peter] Lange saw the consortium as expanding the courses available to Duke students, some […]

The shale bonanza just keeps on giving. The Williston Basin, one of the biggest sources of shale oil and gas in the US, has much more recoverable energy than previously estimated. This resource, located primarily in North Dakota (there are some fields in South Dakota, Montana and Canada), may have three times as much undiscovered […]

To attract business to her state, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez (R) has taken a page from the playbooks of Governors Bobby Jindal and Sam Brownback: cutting the corporate income tax. While Governor Martinez has yet to follow Jindal and Brownback in their (unsuccessful) attempts to abolish the tax entirely, she clearly wants to join the […]

In its May 2013 issue, First Things published an article by Edward Shapiro under the title “The Crisis of Conservative Judaism”. The last phrase does not refer to conservatism in general, but to the specific branch of Judaism that goes under that name. As is well known, American Judaism is divided into three denominations—Orthodox (which […]

The Russian energy firm Gazprom is increasingly off its stride in Europe, its largest export market. Bulgaria has managed to negotiate a 20 percent price cut in its new ten-year contract with the gas giant, an unprecedented reversal of fortune from only a short time ago. Gazprom had cut off gas to the Ukraine in […]

India and China remain locked in a standoff in the high Himalayas. Chinese troops erected a fifth military tent at the camp they set up 16 days ago, 19 kilometers inside Indian territory in the remote northern region of Ladakh. “High placed sources” told India’s Zee News that the Chinese troops are unlikely to withdraw.The […]