Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance system at Farnborough 2010. Anguskirk/Flickr. Some rights reserved.The Baghdad government's success in retaking the city of Ramadi from ISIS forces has been widely reported in western media. At the same time the picture on the ground is nothing like as simple as is often portrayed. Even as the victory was being celebrated, it was becoming clear that ISIS elements still controlled several areas around the Iraqi city. These elements have proved very difficult to dislodge, with some even able to undertake offensive actions against government positions. At the same time, other ISIS contingents were attacking government forces and local militias in the western Iraqi town of…

You might say President Trump himself is a cartoon. Sometimes he’s like a Saturday morning cartoon: goofy, juvenile and harmless. Other times, he’s more like something on Adult Swim: absurd, offensive and existing in a realm beyond irony. Still, it can be hard to truly capture the essence of Trump in a standard comedic image. Even the award-winning geniuses at South Park have acknowledged as much, saying they will limit their focus on Trump in their upcoming season because some things exist beyond parody. But the world’s political cartoonists have given it their best with some compelling results. Perhaps most notably was the cover of Germany’s Der Spiegel, which captured…

US navy landing on Okinawa in September, 1945. Flickr/Don O'Brien. Some rights reserved.The history of Okinawa, a group of small islands located in the East China Sea, is not known to many. Before it was forcibly annexed by the Japanese government in 1879 through military force, the islands were governed by an independent kingdom (Ryukyu Kingdom) which enjoyed its strategic trade location and housed diverse religions and languages. As the vastly unique culture and religions which had existed since 1429 was halted through Japanese colonization, assimilation policies were imposed on the people of Okinawa, including a ban on using indigenous languages and practicing religious and other forms of cultural tradition.…

By many accounts, Donald Trump’s bold use of Twitter helped him get the attention and votes necessary to win a presidential race few initially thought he could. Given Trump’s affinity for the social media platform, it was unsurprising that tweets began streaming from his @realDonaldTrump account before noon on Inauguration Day. Trump’s first tweets as president included snippets of his inauguration speech, simple thank yous to supporters and a short clip of the Freedom Ball dance he shared with his wife. Within 24 hours, however, the new president stumbled up against complicated federal law when he (or one of his staff) tweeted, then deleted, that Trump was “honered” to serve…

for freedom. Flickr/Ashiful Haque. Some rights reserved.It looks like an ironic twist in history: liberal democracies at the beginning of the twenty first century seem to emulate imploded communist dictatorships of the second half of the twentieth century in their surveillance and control practices. The rapid development and wide availability of technologies, such as telecommunication data mining technologies, profiling and predictive analytics, biometric identification and pattern recognition, location tracking technologies, as well as surveillance in the form of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and  closed-circuit television (CCTV), has obviously increased the propensity of state agencies to make use of them.  Security technologies enter into and transform the relationship between state bureaucracies…

In his first week in office, President Donald Trump showed he intends to follow through on his immigration promises. A major focus of his campaign was on removing immigrants who, he said, were increasing crime in American communities. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump named victims who were reportedly killed by undocumented immigrants and said: Now as president, he has signed executive orders that restrict entry of immigrants from seven countries into the United States and authorize the construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. He also signed an order to prioritize the removal of “criminal aliens” and to withhold federal funding from “sanctuary…

There are few times when math and food go together so well than on Pi Day, which falls on March 14 (3.14). Started in 1988 by San Francisco Exploratorium physicist Larry Shaw, who had the lab’s staff march in a circle and then eat pie, Pi Day is universally accepted as a great day to indulge in pie, which (if you remember your fifth grade math correctly), has a circumference of 2 π r. Even better than math is cutting two radii into a delicious pastry and grabbing a slice. In honor of Pi Day, here are a few of the best pies: Strawberry rhubarb Strawberry Rhubarb is the king of…

Alleged gang members in Honduras In the last two decades, Honduras has seen a significant increase in gang membership, gang criminal activity, and gang-related violence. The uptick in violence has been particularly troubling. In 2014, Honduras was considered the most violent nation in the world that was not at war. Although high impunity rates and lack of reliable data make it difficult to assess how many of these murders are gang-related, it's clear that the gangs' use of violence — against rivals, civilians, security forces and perceived transgressors within their own ranks — has greatly contributed to these numbers. Among the areas hardest hit are the country's urban centers. Honduras'…

You can tell the story about Grandpa deciding to run his first marathon at age 60, and how Aunt Jenny was the first one in your family to go to college. But can recount your family’s money story? Our Family Money Story is the “original software” behind the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors we bring to our financial life. For some of us, our Family Money Story is all too familiar. For others, it percolates under the surface, influencing our choices without our conscious awareness. Some of us work to modify that programming as we run into limitations in the ways that it serves us. But before we can do that, we…