With only a few weeks remaining until the election, it’s still not clear how Mitt Romney would manage our jobs crisis. There aren’t many lessons from his term as the governor of Massachusetts — the economy was comparatively healthy back then, and the unemployment rate was fairly low. His current economic platform lays out broad […]

BOSTON — In the ongoing fungal meningitis outbreak tied to a Framingham pharmacy, federal health officials now warn that anyone given an injectable drug made by the pharmacy could be at risk for infection. 14,000 people were already considered to be at risk in the outbreak after receiving injectable steroids made by the New England […]

Voters dislike negative advertising. And voters don’t like super PACs very much. But perhaps I repeat myself. Check out this animation of spending by super PACs over time from Northeastern University’s Lazer Lab, last seen in this space with another infographic on fundraising. This video breaks super-PAC money down by both partisanship (Democratic vs. Republican) […]

Daniel S. Medwed of Northeastern University School of Law writes about the state of criminal justice in New England.

While ratings for almost everything on television have sunk, big spectacles that hold some promise of spontaneity — N.F.L. games, the Olympics and various singing competitions — continue to thrive.

Firefox had to yank the new Firefox 16 this week because of a security problem. The flaw could have let hackers see a user’s browsing history. Firefox has issued a patch, but it’s still not out of the woods. Now, I use Firefox. I’ve resisted the allure of Google’s shiny Chrome browser because I’m worried […]

Add another chapter to the illustrious history of freewheeling vice presidential debates. At Centre College in Kentucky, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan engaged in what might euphemistically be described as a lively exchange of ideas. In reality it felt more like a testy verbal brawl between father and son. Consider these key 5 moments from […]

AUDIO: Thursday night may be Representative Paul Ryan’s first debate on a national television stage, but Vice President Joe Biden is an old hand. Four years ago he debated Sarah Palin, and before that he was on stage in the presidential primaries.

In the fall of 2008, as Sen. Joe Biden pondered the delicate task of debating Gov. Sarah Palin, his debate team honchos circulated an internal preparation memo. The first sentence: “No candidate for president or vice president in the history of the country has had more advice on what to say than Sen. Biden has […]

He has been stereotyped as the Obama administration’s gaffe-prone sideshow. But Vice President Joe Biden also is a veteran debater who was in the U.S. Senate for a quarter century and is perhaps the Democratic White House’s most passionate defender of the working class. Now, with his debate against Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan […]

Researchers from Northeastern University report that only girls from healthy families are positively affected in terms of mental health when moving from high- to low-poverty communities.

With a growing body of evidence to support that economic inequality suppresses growth and creates instability, what should the next president do to reverse this long standing trend? Northeastern University’s Barry Bluestone and Boston Federal Reserve Bank economist Katharine Bradbury offer their thoughts. Barry Bluestone: In our quest to understand rising U.S. inequality since the […]