Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Articles”
Depending on how you look at it, the mood in the United States of late has been either an overdue stock-taking — as we reckon with issues like racism, rape culture, runaway law enforcement and out-of-control income inequality — or relentlessly grim. Surely, unrelieved despair — either personally or more broadly, socially — can lead to paralysis. But despite a …
Following several high-profile data breaches — such as those at Sony and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — Congress is once again feeling the pressure to push “cybersecurity” legislation. The problem is, the bill they’re laser-focused on is misguided, wouldn’t protect us — and is a huge gift to companies wanting legal cover if and when they choose to …
If you want a sleepless night — or month — just listen to what Western security officials are saying these days about a possible confrontation with Russia. “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States,” warned General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “I’d have …
More than a thousand artificial-intelligence researchers have cosigned an open letter calling for a ban on autonomous weapons, or “killer robots.” As The Verge reports, they have been joined by hundreds more sympathetic signatories from outside the industry — including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, scientist Stephen Hawking, and social theorist Noam Chomsky. Autonomous weapons capable of attacking targets without human …
Don’t sweat the details of the July nuclear accord between the United States and Iran. What matters is that the calculus of power in the Middle East just changed in significant ways. Washington and Tehran announced their nuclear agreement on July 14th and yes, some of the details are still classified. Of course the Obama administration negotiated alongside China, Russia, …
China’s stock market suffered its biggest one-day sell-off since 2007 on Monday, with share values plunging by more than 8.5 percent. Panic selling triggered the automatic suspension of trading for over 1,000 companies, leading Chinese financial authorities to announce a new round of share purchases in an attempt to stop the rout. However, Chinese stock indexes continued to fall in …
Hedge fund managers and bondholders are pressing the government of Puerto Rico to drive through a series of punishing austerity measures, including dramatic cuts to public education and workers’ rights protections, to “solve” the crisis of debt and poverty gripping the Caribbean island. A group representing $5.2 billion of debt held by 38 investment managers paid three former economists for …
Also the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, came to the United States the previous week and held high-level meetings with Obama along with other officials in the State Department and the Pentagon. Obama’s term ends next year and many have criticized him for not visiting the country where his father was born since he was elected …
Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will turn deadly. The odds weren’t in Walter L. Scott’s favor. Reportedly pulled over for a …
Yesterday Oklahoma recorded five earthquakes centered near Crescent, Oklahoma, some of which were felt in at least five states—Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Missouri and Arkansas. Three of the quakes measured above 4.0-magnitude and the biggest of these was a 4.5-magnitude earthquake, the strongest earthquake in the region since a magnitude-4.9 near Conway Springs, Kansas, on Nov. 12, 2014. The strongest magnitude earthquake …
