In The News

The News: The Voice of the Voiceless

Kamila Hyat February 19, 2018
The Federally Administered Tribal Areas are a semiautonomous region in Northwest Pakistan, long labeled as a source of security concerns for the entire region. Pashtun tribal people are engaging in peaceful protests, demanding more control, rights and services including schools and educators, hospitals and health providers. The compounding needs and complaints is a “dangerous trend in the current...

Asian Scientist: Plastic Degrading Enzyme Enhanced

February 16, 2018
A research group from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have modified enzymes in bacteria that degrade polyethylene terephthalate, a main ingredient in plastics. Non-bio-degradable plastics contribute to pollution. Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacteria that can use PET as a carbon source. The research team, using 3D modeling and biochemical studies, identified how the bacteria...

Spiegel Online: Trump's Dangerous Game With the US Dollar

Tim Bartz and Martin Hesse February 16, 2018
Economists around the globe suggest the United States is engaging in a currency war. “Even though the U.S. economy has already been growing robustly for years and, with an unemployment rate of just 4.1 percent, is approaching full employment, Trump is continuing to stimulate growth – a focus that could result in an overheated economy, which would present a danger to the entire global economy,”...

The Wall Street Journal: China Is Winning the Global Race to Control Batteries

Scott Patterson and Russell Gold February 15, 2018
China listed electric vehicles as one of seven strategic priorities in 2011 and now dominates the markets for batteries from mining cobalt in Africa to production. More than half of the world’s cobalt is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a Wall Street Journal articles describes small-scale miners, often working in unsafe conditions, selling ore to Chinese buyers. “Those buyers then...

Reuters: Ramaphosa Elected President of South Africa

Wendell Roelf February 15, 2018
Jacob Zuma, in power since May of 2009, resigned as South Africa's president on orders from the African National Congress, the ruling party. Cyril Ramaphosa, a lawyer, former trade unionist and businessman, was nominated to become next president by the National Assembly. He will serve as president until elections in 2019. Ramaphosa’s “stated commitment to boosting growth and stamping out...

New Statesman: The New Age of Great Power Politics

John Bew February 14, 2018
Political scientist Samuel Huntington and others have theorized that elites as beneficiaries of globalization demonstrate less loyalty for nations. Many anticipated great power rivalries to subside after the Cold War, but resentment emerged about global endeavors as revealed by Brexit and Donald Trump’s election: “Two of the nations that had evangelised most about the liberal international order...

ESPN: Kid Fearless

Alyssa Roenigk February 13, 2018
Chloe Kim at age 17 won the snowboard halfpipe gold medal for the US Olympic Team. South Korea and the rest of the world, too, celebrate the story of immigrant success and a child who made her Olympic debut in her parents’ homeland. Her father came to the United States in 1982 at age 26. “With $800 and an English-Korean dictionary, Jong purchased a 1970 Nova, bought a carton of Kent cigarettes...