The Conversation

During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, and the early decades of the 20th century, U.S. captains of industry such as William Randolph Hearst and Jay Gould used their massive wealth to dominate facets of the economy, including the news…

Editorial Note: Teaching in high school for the 18 years prior to initial rumblings of this exhausting decade, I recall emphasis from school districts encouraging accreditation for classroom teachers to transition to administrative hierarchies. I also remember the words of…

When the Human Genome Project announced that they had completed the first human genome in 2003, it was a momentous accomplishment – for the first time, the DNA blueprint of human life was unlocked. But it came with a catch – they…

Since the letter from President Pedro Sánchez to the King of Morocco was made public on Friday 17 March, the reactions to it have been numerous and disparate, although most of them coincide in criticising both the substance and the…

The world now has a new COVID-19 vaccine in its arsenal, and at a fraction of the cost per dose. Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has seen over 314 million infections and over 5.5 million deaths worldwide. Approximately 60%…

Elon Musk hinted on Oct. 31, 2021, perhaps jokingly, that he might be willing to donate US$6 billion of his fortune to pay for hunger relief. But there was a catch: The United Nations would have to prove that it can…

Editorial note:   The need for constructive information is critical in our decision-making process. When information becomes tainted with special interests, spin, myopic visions for power & control from divisive factions, the intensity shifts from interests of good governance to the…

The government of Afghanistan and that country’s economy relied heavily on foreign aid until the U.S. withdrawal. That support is on hold, although the United States and its allies have begun to take steps toward resuming some humanitarian assistance. Here, Mohammad…

Some have called NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope the “telescope that ate astronomy.” It is the most powerful space telescope ever built and a complex piece of mechanical origami that has pushed the limits of human engineering. On Dec. 18, 2021, after…

By Ahmet T. Kuru Junaid Hafeez, a university lecturer in Pakistan, had been imprisoned for six years when he was sentenced to death in December 2019. The charge: blasphemy, specifically insulting Prophet Muhammad on Facebook. Pakistan has the world’s second strictest blasphemy…