In 1990, just 16% of Americans opposed marijuana prohibition. Today, 53% think cannabis should be legal—and with more states set to legalize the drug this year, experts say the federal prohibition isn’t long for this world.
In 2013, Tom Donohue, the pugnacious leader of the US Chamber of Commerce, showed not even the slightest inkling of doubt that bipartisan immigration reform was about to pass. “We’re going to get that bill,” he told an audience of adoring small business owners. After all, he personally helped broker the deal that brought the bill’s sponsors together.
Heavily armed US soldiers have been photographed assisting a Kurdish militia unit fighting to re-take Raqqa, the Syrian city that the Islamic State (ISIL) calls its capital.
Update, 7:00 p.m.: SpaceX has scrubbed the launch 24 hours due to a problem detected in the upper stage of the rocket. The new launch window opens at 5:40 p.m. on May 27.
If you’re not an American football fan, think of this as a story of a $13 billion company that can’t get its head around basic science.
If you’re confused about why American economic growth has been so disappointing, consider this: US government investment in capital, research and development, and education and training is at its lowest point in 45 years. In 2014, federal investment turned negative for the first time since 2001, meaning that government capital is depreciating or becoming obsolete faster than it is being replaced.
A surprising new estimate finds that only 24% of US corporate stock can be taxed by the US government because the rest is held in tax-free accounts.
You don’t need Donald Trump to tell you that Apple refuses to manufacture its iPhone in the United States—the late Steve Jobs even told US president Barack Obama personally that it couldn’t be done.
This work by artist Mark Bradford sold for $3.5 million at auction on May 8, among more than a billion dollars worth of contemporary art sold by major auction houses Phillips, Sotheby’s and Christie’s during New York City’s spring sales week—and so far, this is a bad year.
In the spirit of sharing data visualizations that appear to be right on the nose, here’s a chart flagged by our friends at the World Bank. It shows a somewhat surprising—indeed, hopeful—result: That humans are now farming more of our own seafood than we catch in the wild.
In the 2016 edition of its World Development Indicators, the World Bank has made a big choice: It’s no longer distinguishing between “developed” countries and “developing” ones in the presentation of its data.
It’s a nightmare come true for Donald Trump’s supporters: A joint US-Mexican plot to bring hundreds of foreigners across the border for a global tournament of an “un-American” sport.
Donald Trump’s top economic advisor came out hard against plans to ease the burden of student debt carried by Americans seeking higher education.
Since the Space Shuttle was retired, there are two ways to get cargo off the International Space Station: Fiery destruction in the atmosphere, or a ride inside SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, the only craft capable of returning to Earth meaningful amounts of stuff from the world’s floating outpost in orbit.
Refusing to dispel accusations that he is lying about his wealth, presumptive Republican presidential nominee and self-described billionaire Donald Trump says he will not release his tax returns before the 2016 election.
The mega-cargo ship CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin is as long as the Empire State building is tall, but the ship’s marketers will need to find a more country-appropriate analogy for its size now that it has been pulled from US trade routes.
It should be obvious why Republican speaker of the House Paul Ryan is reluctant to embrace his party’s expected presidential nominee, Donald Trump.
Experts are baffled by the Obama administration’s new rules to fight money laundering, which appear to create a glaring new loophole for the bad actors the rules are intended to target.
Could the confetti pageantry of the Democratic National Convention turn into a knock-down, drag-out fight over the party’s platform?
Flying satellites and landing rockets are almost becoming routine for the Elon Musk’s rocket company, but SpaceX still managed to wedge a new milestone into their latest flight.
The potential for clean, limitless nuclear-fusion power has led humanity to spend billions of dollars seeking it out, ever since Albert Einstein came up with the theories that make it possible. With the specter of climate change looming, the stakes are ever higher.
On Monday, May 9, a trove of information from the Panama Papers will hit the web. Mostly, it will be a list of names.
Only the space agencies of the Soviet Union, the US and the EU have landed anything on Mars. This week Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX said it would put its Dragon spacecraft on the red planet “as soon as 2018″—making it the first private company to go interplanetary.
Elon Musk has long said that his dream of colonizing Mars led him to found SpaceX. Now, we have a target date for the first visit.
