Health insurance costs are skyrocketing in California, where many citizens will soon face double digit premium hikes. According to the LA Times, Blue Shield of California and Aetna Inc recently announced premium “increases that average more than 11 percent for about 47,000 individual and small-business policyholders.” California health bureaucrats are understandably unhappy and blame the insurance companies for the new rates.But their anger is misdirected. […]

Corn-based ethanol starves the world’s poor and increases greenhouse gas emissions, yet the US is intent on propping it up with ill-conceived mandates. Many fuel suppliers and oil refiners have been forced to buy credits to meet these quotas, and the price of these credits has risen a staggering 1,400 percent since the start of […]

Sporting a North Face cap and a thick red beard, Omar Abu al-Chechen might be northern Syria’s most recognizable rebel leader. Except he isn’t from Syria; he’s from the Caucasus, the troubled region in Russia home to decades-long insurgencies that pit Moscow against determined Islamic militants.“Truly today there is a chance to establish (an Islamic state) […]

A new study has put Moore’s law to the test and found it to be a much more powerfully predictive tool than originally thought, applicable to a wide range of technologies. (Moore’s law observes that roughly every two years, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles.) Nature reports: [Researchers] compared several mathematical laws that purport […]

The mobile app market was once reserved for techies and programmers, but that market has now burst open to people of all fields and skill levels. The WSJ explores how these new, small, and perhaps less traditionally tech-savvy entrepreneurs are increasingly using apps to sell everything from electronics to designer apparel.And the possibilities go far beyond retail. […]

Younger Catholics are more “conservative” on many issues than their older counterparts, according to some data buried in a new NYT/CBS news poll. In absolute numbers the poll found that the majority of US Catholics want the next Pope to change Church teachings on hot button issues of gender and sexuality. But the really interesting news […]

Via Meadia readers know that the most important political battle in America today isn’t the much-ballyhooed battle for the soul of the GOP. It is the blue civil war, pitting key elements of the Democratic coalition against one another as the old social model fails and the growth curve of rising blue model costs runs […]

The heir of India’s greatest political dynasty doesn’t want to be prime minister. That’s what Rahul Gandhi—descended from former prime ministers Rajiv (assassinated in 1991), Indira (assassinated in 1984), and Jawaharlal Nehru (the first prime minister of India)—said yesterday in a “rare free-wheeling conversation with Congress MPs and journalists” in Delhi.Gandhi’s comments are probably a […]

Suntech, the world’s highest-selling producer of solar panels, has just fired its founder and chairman as it scrambles to pay a $541 million bill. The Chinese firm has been struggling to turn a profit for years due to an oversupply of solar panels in the global market. The Financial Times reports: A top Chinese energy official […]

Nearly one out of every ten Americans works from home at least once a week, according to a new Census Bureau report released this week. That’s 13.4 million people cutting out their commutes and maybe even working more effectively. The Wall Street Journal reports: Some research suggests allowing people to work from home can raise productivity. […]