Bradley Manning Wins Peace Prize
19 Jul 2013 - U.S. whistleblower and international hero Bradley Manning has just been awarded the 2013 Sean MacBride Peace Award by the International Peace Bureau, itself a former recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, for which Manning is a nominee this year.
What if consumers could choose to buy garments based on how socially responsibly it was made in Bangladesh?
In an interview with The Guardian, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Laureate pioneer of microfinance, proposes an index that would do just that: a transparent system to hold apparel companies and governments accountable for factory and labor conditions. Yunus' idea is in response to the tragic building collapse in Bangladesh [...]
The best way to speed up economic growth: Turn on the lights
The Electrify Africa Act of 2013, awaiting committee approval in Congress, will help turn on the lights for millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.Following President Obama’s Power Africa initiative announced earlier this month, which invests $16 billion in public and private funding to combat energy poverty in Africa, Congress is [...]
Fukushima Continues
The first thing to know about the danger from the radioactive mass remaining in the three reactors that melted down at Fukushima is that nobody knows how much radioactive material there is, nobody knows how much uranium and plutonium it contains, and nobody knows how to make it safe – [...]
Solar provides a roadmap for financing alternative energies. Will microfinance bite?
Today, microfinance banks see it as a solid investment, even for poor clients, and bio-gas may follow its footsteps.Hussein Farag lives in Cairo’s Darb el Ahmar district where people earn around $3 a day. Poor families, like his, cook with butane gas because government subsidies make it cheap. Knowing the [...]
The Social Responsibility of Scientists
It has been proposed that graduates in science and engineering should take an oath, analogous to that taken by graduating medical students. They should promise never to use their education in the service of war, nor for the production of weapons, or in any way that might be harmful to [...]