Tim Fernholz

Plans to make money in space are missing one of the fundamental ingredients to any business: property rights.

The US has declassified and released a collection of the documents that Navy SEALs recovered during the 2011 raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan that ended in the Al Qaeda leader’s death. The declassified letters, books, articles, and technical documents certainly a suggest a man keeping up with the world.

The Air Force is scheduled to conduct its fourth launch of the X-37B spacecraft—a flying robot that looks like a shrunken down version of the Space Shuttle—and we still don’t know exactly what it will do up there in orbit.

Free-trade agreements touch so many different aspects of the market that their consequences can be difficult to predict.

The White House has announced that federal programs to pass certain surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies will come to an end.

Americans almost certainly eat chocolate and shrimp produced by forced labor, even though importing goods made unwillingly is against US law.

Bitcoin is a tricky subject. The concept behind the digital currency can be difficult to explain to someone for the first time, and its history—barely six years old—is already fraught with controversy, starting with the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, author of the first bitcoin code.

For weeks, supporters of US president Barack Obama’s request for trade-negotiating powers—considered necessary to ink major new trade deals that would cap his term in office—feared his own party would sink him. Those fears were proven correct today as Congressional Democrats blocked consideration of the powers.

What’s holding the US economy back? According to new research by economists, a big part of the problem is that when people living in New York City, San Francisco, and San Jose say “not in my backyard,” it turns out what happens in their backyard affects the rest of the United States.

Update, 6.12.15: The podcast has now launched, and you can listen or subscribe to Actuality in iTunes.

If the surprise Tory victory in the UK election bolsters the debate about a potential British exit from the European Union, there is going to be at least one member of the opposition with a highly personal stake in the outcome—newly-elected Labour MP Stephen Kinnock is married to Denmark’s prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

A US federal appeals court—essentially, the second-highest in the land—has ruled that the bulk collection of US telephone records by the National Security Agency isn’t permitted by laws passed after the 9/11 attacks to increase intelligence collection. You can read the entire decision here (pdf).

Hillary Clinton laid down an important marker yesterday in her campaign for the presidency, endorsing a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants as part of comprehensive immigration reform.

Astronauts frequently compare riding a rocket to sitting on top of a bomb.

Americans, as a whole, are the world’s biggest debtors. But is that their fault, or even such a bad thing?

The only woman in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination has broken glass ceilings–but also left a mess in her wake.

Right now, the only official challenger in Hillary Clinton’s path to the Democratic presidential nomination is a 73-year-old socialist from Vermont.

Blue Origin, the space company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, had its first successful test flight yesterday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits Washington this week, and he hopes to come back with strengthened ties to his country’s largest ally—including, perhaps, improved prospects for a free trade deal promoted by US President Obama that would link Japan to the US and eleven other nations.

Today Chipotle announced that genetically-modified organisms will no longer find a place in its pantry—but taken literally, that means no more corn, a crop that has its origins in human intervention.

Update, 6.12.15: The podcast has now launched, and you can listen or subscribe to Actuality in iTunes.

Now that Comcast has announced its merger with Time Warner Cable is off, we can tally up some of the damage to the two companies. What did they lose? Four things, mainly:

This item has been corrected.

It’s time for political scandal season to begin in the US, and one of our first entries involves Russia, the global uranium market, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.