Jackie Northam

Thanks in large part to hydraulic fracturing, the U.S. finds itself awash in domestic energy — and moving rapidly toward self-sufficiency and a position of strategic and economic strength.

Thanks to fracking, there is an abundance of natural gas at about a quarter of the European price. This influx of business may be good for the U.S., but it's cause for concern for European leaders.

Europe has been trying to reduce its energy dependence on Russia for years. The crisis in Crimea has given the effort a greater sense of urgency.

Ten supertankers are under construction and there are orders for another 15, but just three years ago the tanker market was barely moving.

The World Bank is undergoing a vast reorganization, its first in nearly 20 years. The process has been controversial, but the bank's president says it's needed to foster better internal collaboration.

Launched in August, the Maersk McKinney Moller is the first of a new class of megaships. It's 20 stories high and a quarter-mile long. NPR's Jackie Northam hopped on board in Poland.

New container ships stack their cargo 10 stories high. They're so wide they won't fit through the Panama Canal until it's widened. Companies say this is what they need to survive in the 21st century.

Liquor companies like to make drinkers think that their favorite spirits always have been and always will be attached to a very particular place — Kentucky bourbon, Irish whiskey, Russia vodka.

But like many other industries, the liquor business has gone global and a small number of players increasingly dominate ...

On a quiet fall morning in the Delaware countryside, a lone sustained whistle pierces the air. Within moments, a train sweeps around a broad curve, its two heavy locomotives hauling dozens of white, cylindrical rail cars, loaded with 70,000 barrels of crude oil.

It's a scene playing out with growing ...

As the Obama administration argues for a military intervention in Syria in response to a chemical attack that it says killed more than 1,400 Syrians, analysts say the case for a strike lacks a legal framework.

President Obama said Friday that the decision to act is part of a U.S. ...

For roughly two decades, the Zodiac has been the U.S. military's choice for inflatable rubber rafts. These rafts, especially the high-end model F470, are not the recreational rafts you take out to the lake on a Sunday, says Lionel Boudeau, the head of Zodiac's North America operations.

"It is used ...

U.S. and EU officials begin talks Monday on an ambitious free-trade agreement aimed at generating billions of dollars of new trade. But negotiators must overcome barriers created by cultural and philosophical differences over sectors like agriculture. In Europe, the cultivation of genetically modified crops is banned, while in the U.S., ...

Aracelis Upia Montero bounds through the front door of her wood and cinderblock house, calling out for her children. The bubbly 41-year-old Montero — whom everyone calls Kuki — proudly shows guests around her cramped single-story home in Villa Altagracia in the Dominican Republic.

Montero points out her new living ...

On a bright and warm Saturday morning, there's a steady flow of people dropping off donations at Martha's Table, a charity in downtown Washington, D.C. A mountain of plastic and paper bags stuffed with used dresses, scarves, skirts and footwear expands in one corner of the room. Volunteers sort and ...

There is constant motion around four new supersized, Chinese-made cranes as they unload cargo from a ship at the Port of Baltimore's freshly constructed Seagirt Marine Terminal.

Control cabs whir across the cranes' broad steel beams, and thick cables spin from giant wheels. Containers packed with consumer goods — TVs, ...