News

China recently launched a Shenzhou 11 spacecraft marking “another great leap forward for the nation’s space program… China is NASA’s biggest rival in space exploration… In 2007, the nation tested an anti-satellite missile by blowing up a Chinese craft… U.S.-based analysts are concerned that China is hitting the accelerator as NASA hits the brakes” (Bloomberg, November 28, 2016).

Some sports analysts might have “found religion” this baseball season. The Chicago Cubs, against their century-long tradition of incompetence, played incredible baseball. They were the best team in Major League Baseball during the regular season and capped it all off with a thrilling win in game seven of the World Series. Have the Four Horsemen been unleashed? Is the Cubs’ World Series Championship a sign of the end of the world?

In spite of positive job growth in the U.S., “the percentage of working-age Americans in the labor force remains stuck near its lowest level since the late 1970s. Although retiring baby boomers are the main reason, there’s another troubling factor that experts predict won’t be solved by stronger economic growth. Too many men in their prime don’t have a job and aren’t even looking for one. Experts trying to figure out the reasons are probing the roles of criminal background checks, painkillers and even video games.