Just as his release of embarrassing secrets about U.S. cyber intelligence tarnished Washington’s relations with many European nations last month, so have Edward Snowden’s leaks now led to a serious diplomatic stand-off between Australia and Indonesia.

This year’s global climate summit talks in Warsaw are set to come to a close later this week, and yet again it looks like nothing lasting will come of them. But even by the annual UN summit’s own dismal standard, this round has been particularly dysfunctional.First, Poland set the tone by scheduling a coal conference in […]

MOOC students are disproportionately educated and male when compared with the country at large according to a University of Pennsylvania study making the rounds this week. The study, which looked at the demographics of students taking the university’s courses through Coursera, found that just under 60 percent of all students were male, and over 80 […]

 What a difference a day makes. Ukraine, which was set to sign a free trade and association agreement with the EU in eight days, today spun on its heel. Reuters reports: The order issued by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said the government was suspending preparations for concluding the agreement with the EU “with the aim […]

Punitive measures enforced by Egypt and the incompetence of the ruling Hamas government have combined to make the humanitarian disaster in Gaza one of the most sickening around. The NYT reports that a shortage of electricity and cheap diesel fuel from Egypt has led the Hamas government to shut down Gaza’s lone power plant, causing […]

Riots erupted in August between Hindus and Muslims in Muzaffarnagar, a large city in the key battleground state of Uttar Pradesh. At the end of the several days of destruction, 43 people were dead and tens of thousands had fled their homes. Afterward, two politicians belonging to India’s main opposition party, the BJP (the party of controversial […]

So far, coverage about the Affordable Care Act has focused on rate shock and policy cancellations. But the next wave of bad news is coming, and it could wind up being even more fatal to public support for the law. Supporters of Obamacare can fight back against the rate shock stories by pointing to examples […]

In California, one college’s embrace of MOOCs has sent the faculty into open revolt. Under the leadership of President Mohammad H. Qayoumi, San Jose State has spent the year in the vanguard of early-adopting institutions. In January, the school announced a partnership with Udacity to offer a remedial math course at the university—one of the […]

Seismologists are tackling a troubling question with enormous implications for America’s—and the world’s—energy future: does fracking cause earthquakes? The debate is centered in Oklahoma, which has experienced a rash of earthquakes in recent years. The state has experienced more than 100 3.0+ magnitude quakes so far this year, more than five times the state’s 2009 […]

The number of people infected with AIDS in South Africa exceeds the population of Denmark, and people are dying at rates that are hard to wrap your head around: The country has the world’s most severe HIV problem, with some 5.6 million citizens – more than 10% of the population – currently living with the […]