Once again, we’ve reached that point in the political calendar when major parties draft platforms and adopt them at their conventions. The Republicans passed their 2016 party platform by uncontested voice vote on the first night of their convention,...

Large swaths of the American public want Donald J. Trump to be their president – maybe even a majority, according to an analysis from Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight in late July.

Many people – Democrats and Republicans alike – find this shocking.

Trump made his name as the “You’re fired” guy. He has never...

Approximately four million women give birth each year in the United States. Most women have some level of fear about labor and birth; it is considered part of the normal experience of childbirth.

For some women, that fear may be about whether she and the baby will be healthy. Other women may fear that...

The demands of being a presidential candidate take a toll on sleep. And the demands are not likely to lessen for whomever is elected.

President Obama says he schedules six hours of sleep a night but that is not always possible, and Bill Clinton reported getting five to six hours. How much sleep is needed for senior executives such as our president...

From the U.K.’s Brexit vote to the U.S. presidential race, a handful of campaigns and elections around the world dominate news cycle after news cycle.

One election that has gotten less attention than it deserves is the one in Peru, which recently picked a new president. He’s set to take office this week.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, an Oxford-...

Imagine walking along in the African savanna. Suddenly you notice a moving bush partially obscuring a large yellow object. From this limited information, you need to figure out if you’re in danger and decide how to react. Is it a pile of dry...

The failed July 15 military coup in Turkey was a long time in the making. Its aftermath is the final act in what may be viewed as the devolution of Turkish democracy into an authoritarian state.

Prelude: Turkish appetite for democracy

Turkey is a country where citizens’ demand for democracy has steadily grown over the last 15 years. A long...

The celebrated Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in northeastern Minnesota, which constitutes one million acres of the Superior National Forest, is among the most...

Ahead of the Democratic National Convention – on July 5 – Hillary Clinton announced a set of new proposals on higher education. Key measures included eliminating college tuition for families with annual incomes under US$125,000 and a three-month moratorium on federal student loan payments.

Clinton’s original plan had called for...

The 500,000 tourists expected to attend the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will see a dazzling city, miles of sparkling beaches and an Olympic Park with nine venues, all presided over by the towering statue of Christ the Redeemer gazing down from Mount Corcovado.

But another, equally famous feature of Rio – its miles and miles of...