In The News

China Outpaces U.S. in Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants

Keith Bradsher May 12, 2009
As China’s rate of building coal power plants has increased in recent years, fears of global climate change have followed apace. But looking closer at the newer plants reveals that China’s massive construction scheme may actually help to reduce emissions. Many of the new plants are more efficient and also come with a government condition that an older, less efficient plant be retired to ensure...

Irish Student Hoaxes World's Media with Fake Quote

Shawn Pogatchnik May 12, 2009
Making up fake quotes may once have been considered a school boy prank. Today, when those quotes are posted on the world’s foremost online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and then are incorrectly attributed by numerous online news services, it becomes an experiment in how globalization monitors itself. A Dublin university student posted a fake quote of composer and conductor Maurice Jarre on Wikipedia...

The Downside of Letting Robots Do the Bombing

Mark Mazzetti March 26, 2009
Washington is mulling the long-term implications of using drone robots – missiles attached to remote-controlled planes – to kill enemies in combat, reports Mark Mazzetti for the New York Times. The drones attack Al Qaeda leaders hiding in remote regions of Pakistan without endangering US troops, Mazzetti writes, yet are “the antithesis of the grinding, patient and high-risk counterinsurgency...

Firewalls to Freedom

Rebecca MacKinnon March 9, 2009
To block popular dissent over policies, governments no longer simply rely on censorship, particularly the imperfect filters devised for the internet. Instead governments of all stripes master the art of spin – emphasizing certain topics and casting their own frame for any issue. Citizens who support government positions can tout policies and quickly blast doubters, as evident prior to the 2003 US...

New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible

January 28, 2009
A new scientific study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns that the world approaches the point of no return with regards to climate change. Soon, even halting carbon-dioxide emissions altogether would not reverse the crucial planetary shifts in rainfall, surface temperature and sea level that threaten human life, not to mention geography itself, as huge coastal regions...

Gaza Conflict Plays Out Online Through Social Media

Corey Flintoff January 15, 2009
Israel has stopped journalists from entering the war zone, but photos and reports continue to flow. As war rages in the Gaza Strip, cross-border social networking continues on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube. “Online media are conglomerating their information, and governments are getting into the act,” reports Corey Flintoff for National Public Radio. The public has changed the way it...

Mobiles Give Africa's Farmers the Chance to Set Out Their Stall

David Smith January 9, 2009
The African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) and its partner Farm-Africa in Katine has developed a strategy that aims to empower the farmers of Katine in northeast Uganda by providing them with cell phones. Although cell-phone growth has exceeded initial estimates, Uganda still lags behind the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo where mobile subscriptions far exceed fixed-line...