Among the many changes currently sweeping through US public universities is a move away from traditional seat-time in class. Known as “competency-based education”, it is often done online, asking students…
The release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes in the middle of a slate of super heroic movies including Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: Winter Solider, and the second in a series of X-Men prequels…
Easter Sunday will mark the fourth anniversary of the BP oil well blowout in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform died and almost five million…
A US judge has approved a US$1.2 billion settlement and accepted a guilty plea by hedge fund SAC Capital in what has been described as the largest insider trading settlement in the country’s history. Eight…
As the curtain fell on the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit, the Dutch organisers must surely have experienced mixed emotions: relief that the summit was a success, yet frustration that media attention was…
Imagine you’d organised a much-anticipated party but because of something you’d said or done nobody turned up? To dismiss the party in the first place would smack of sour grapes but this pretty much captures…
Talks between US secretary of state John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Paris, followed after a week of high-level diplomacy, including a phone call between presidents Obama and Putin…
When the EU-US summit kicks off in Brussels this week, the prospects of a new trade deal will be jostling for attention with events in Ukraine. The long-term implications might even be more far reaching…
Facebook can be a confusing place. For the follower of Ukrainian and Russian politics the messages could not be more different. At the same time that “Euromaidan PR” is posting pictures of “Putler” and…
The Russian invasion and rapid absorption of the Crimean peninsula might seem like the spark ready to ignite a new Cold War. In fact, given the feeble Western response so far, the more likely outcome is…
The CIA and the congressional committees charged with overseeing it are fighting again. With a report on the agency’s post-9/11 interrogation practices still not forthcoming, senate intelligence committee…
When Australia hosts the G20 Leaders’ Summit in November, a top agenda item for its “Brisbane Action Plan” will be “practical actions to improve productivity and competitiveness”. So here’s a good place…
Under the mantra of civil rights, billionaires such as Eli Broad, Bill Gates and the Koch Brothers and the powerful corporate-funded lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are using…
The bi-partisan federal legislation in the US popularly known as “No Child Left Behind” was passed during George W Bush’s first term. It had two important goals: to increase scientifically based education…
Carsten Holz, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The world’s second-largest economy has become the second-most watched and yet investors, politicians and economists are never quite clear what it is they’re looking at. China’s premier, Li Keqiang, is…
Fears over China’s ability to cope with its debt crisis and renewed doubts over recovery in the US have sent investors running back to old faithful: gold. But markets look as if they are favouring tradition…
The second round of the Geneva II talks on Syria have ended with no agreement and without even a decision on the date of a further meeting. The highly experienced UN mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, was clearly…
The humanitarian crisis in Syria is no longer news. It is simple fact: tragedy writ large, as cities burn and lives are ruined. Our eyes may widen at the sheer scale of this destruction: four million people…
Fifty years after the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, the band is still the benchmark for Anglo-American relations. With their swift rise to fame in the US, they started the so-called British…
The US has wasted its “sub-prime” mortgage crisis. The story of how and why this has happened is of interest not only for its own sake, but for the broader themes it reveals. I am a theoretically trained…
Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University