In The News

Degrees and Dollars

Paul Krugman March 8, 2011
The message is bleak: Education does not automatically lead to jobs, suggests Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist. To maximize profits, corporate executives steadily relocate factories to nations with low-cost workers or try fast-improving technology for tasks performed by well-paid, educated workers. Advanced technology and fast-growing productivity continue to reduce jobs, the economist...

India Needs a Sputnik Moment

David J. Karl March 4, 2011
Competition is a great motivating force for individuals and nations. In the global battle to innovate, the preferred weapon of choice is education. Warning his nation that India and China produce more engineers and scientists, US President Barack Obama calls for a Sputnik moment, harkening back to the 1950s when the Soviet satellite launch spurred new investments in education and technology. But...

World’s Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway

March 4, 2011
By over-hunting, over-fishing, over-heating the planet, humans may have triggered the sixth known mass extinction in the history of Earth, notes a paper in the journal Nature and reported on by the news agency AFP. In early mass extinctions, most animal species were destroyed. Mammal species, typically a rare event, are on a decline, struggling against human encroachment on their habitats. If...

Obama Administration Joins Critics of US Nonprofit Group That Oversees Internet

Ian Shapira March 2, 2011
The internet contributed to Arab uprisings in North Africa, and worried leaders question what they consider control of the internet by the US. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organization based in California under contract to the US government, maintains the database of web addresses. Representatives of Russia, China and other nations want the...

Putting Poppies in the Gas Tank

Nicholas Schmidle March 1, 2011
The global demand for opium fuels poppy production in Afghanistan, which funds the Taliban. For years, the US military worked to eradicate poppy crops. But US veterans doing contract work in Afghanistan pointed out that poppies could be used for biofuel. The veterans drew on research from Tasmania, home to the world’s largest legal poppy fields, reports Michael Schmidle for the Atlantic, and...

Anonymous and the Global Correction

February 28, 2011
New communication technologies arm young activists with the tools to disrupt powerful, traditional institutions that simultaneously depend on the internet and apply excessive controls. Since 2005, a loose band of activists known as Anonymous have opposed censorship or a restricted internet, their plans and goals emerging amid fast, furious chatter of message boards. What began as sport in Japan...

A Simmering Cyberwar With Cuba

Nick Miroff February 25, 2011
Alan Gross, a US contractor, awaits trial in Cuba on the charge of “Actions Against the Independence and Territorial Integrity of the State,” reports Nick Miroff for the Global Post. He’s charged with traveling to Cuba as a tourist with the intent of installing unrestricted internet access. Such unlicensed communications are forbidden by the Cuban government. His trial holds some broad foreign-...