Development & Education

UN climate summit asks for 'specific actions' to hit Paris targets

September 19, 2019

Secretary-General António Guterres has asked countries to come to the UN summit with specific plans for how they intend to cut carbon emissions in line with the most recent science, which says global greenhouse gas emissions must fall 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Global Politics

Indonesia’s bold plan: Moving its capital to an island paradise

PRI's The World

September 18, 2019

Indonesia has set its sights on an eco-utopian capital to be built in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. There's a glaring problem with the government's plan, though: The island is literally on fire.

A North Dakota law gives school districts a chance to experiment

Innovation Hub

September 16, 2019

Could an experiment at a small school in the middle of a field in rural North Dakota inspire a revolution in America’s public education system?

Health & Medicine

There's a way for modern medicine to cure diseases even when the treatments aren't profitable

The Conversation

September 16, 2019

While private companies have little incentive to treat and cure many diseases, nonprofits have the potential to save lives by providing valuable funding to help society's most vulnerable people.

Religion

Uptick in church burnings raises alarm in Ethiopia

GlobalPost

September 16, 2019

These incidents of arson and murder come at a time when tensions between the country’s ethnic groups — including Oromo, Amhara and Tigrayan — are already high and causing divisions.

Health & Medicine

A newly designed vaccine may help stamp out remaining polio cases worldwide

The Conversation

September 13, 2019

Despite the amount of lives saved by the Sabin polio vaccine, in rare cases, illnesses can still occur. New research is looking to make the vaccine even safer.

Social media

'Straight-up debunking': How a fact-checker vets fake news

PRI's The World

September 12, 2019

Facebook and others are stepping up to stop the spread of disinformation online in advance of Canada's federal parliamentary elections.

Colombian farmers combine agriculture, ecology to solve economic, health woes

GlobalPost

September 11, 2019

Carlos Osorio has an honorary degree in agroecology from the University of California, Berkeley, and uses his farm to train a new generation of local farmers — and bring city-slicker Colombians and foreign visitors to the farm to tell his story and reconnect them to the land.

Displacement

USC students work with refugees to engineer solutions for better camp life

PRI's The World

September 11, 2019

Omer Azizi spent much of the past year developing an app that he calls Safar, meaning “journey” in both Farsi and Arabic, to solve the information gap that exists for refugees worldwide. It came out of an assignment in a unique class he took last year from the engineering school at USC.

Conflict

Don't ignore serious nonmilitary threats to US national security

The Conversation

September 11, 2019

If the United States is to remain a leading world power into the future, it must be economically productive and competitive on the world stage in ways that go beyond military firepower.

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