BY: JESSICA BEUKER Sixty-two million—that’s the staggering number of girls around the world who are not in school. This past Saturday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced a new campaign that is fighting to get more to school. “I see myself…
Global Stage
As refugees flee for their lives, here are the important items they chose to bring with them
BY: CONNOR BRIAN Currently, we are experiencing what the European Commission has dubbed the world’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. More than 50 million people were displaced in 2014 and floods more are cramming into tiny rubber…
This documentary will change the way you see the world
BY: JESSICA BEUKER Out of sight, out of mind. That’s the mantra that so many of us use to shield ourselves from acknowledging the pain, poverty, heartbreak and terror that so many people, all around the world face on a…
Evolution and climate change just became mandatory curriculum in the heart of the bible-belt
BY: ROB HOFFMAN Alabama has broken ground on new public school standards that will come as a relief to the country’s hopeful progressives. Get your champagne glasses ready, Liberals, Alabama now requires science class to teach evolution and climate change—and…
An Egyptian billionaire wants to turn and entire island into a home for Syrian refugees
M. TOMOSKI As the debate in Europe continues over whether to welcome Syrian refugees, it would appear that there is nothing more powerful than an image. For four years statistics and news reports have flooded the media about the worsening…
China’s state surveillance proposal might as well be straight out of a George Orwell novel
BY: JESSICA BEUKER “Big Brother is watching you.” The chilling slogan was once only part of George Orwell’s fictional dystopia – a totalitarian society where every citizen is under constant surveillance by the government. Now, the idea of “Big Brother”…
Aspen, Colorado, just became the third American city to run on 100% renewable energy
BY: SWIKAR OLI Sustainable energy, that is power generated from non-exhaustible resources such as wind, hydro or solar, has always seemed a little power-weak and a bit too rooted in science-fiction to truly satisfy our energy-hungry needs, but recent stories show…
Brazil’s forest villagers are fighting a losing battle to save their homeland from illegal loggers
Armed first with bows and arrows, swords, rifles and now also GPS tracking devices and cameras, Ka’apor villagers are refusing to lose their land to illegal loggers. Left with only empty promises from their government, villagers have taken charge of…
The Netherlands just banned wild animals from being used in circuses
BY: JESSICA BEUKER On September 15, 2015 a ban on wild animals being used in circuses officially went into effect in the Netherlands. According to Four Paws, there are 22 active circuses in the Netherlands and between 16 of them…
Green-thumbed billionaires are fighting climate change by dumping fossil fuel stocks
BY: TYLER FYFE In the 1980s South African apartheid was still at its peak. Legislation enacted by the white regime made protesting race laws by demonstrations or picketing punishable by imprisonment or whipping. So investment protest was born on American…
Pope Francis is crucifying tax-evading churches that don’t help the needy
BY: SWIKAR OLI With each speech, Pope Francis is looking less and less like his predecessors and increasingly like a political leader. His latest target? Money-hungry churches. The pope told the Portuguese Catholic broadcaster Renascenza in a recent interview that…
An oil company accidentally admitted to global warming in this 53-year-old advertisement
BY: EDITORS In 1962, Humble Oil and Refining Company printed an advertisement in Life Magazine that at the time seemed harmless enough. But 53 years later the advertisement carries a much different connotation. Today fossil fuel use accounts for 57%…
California’s burning but suburban lawns are more lush than ever
BY: JOHNATHAN MOSS California has often been seen as a land of wild possibility, whose city streets unravel for the ambitious like the scarlet rug of Hollywood’s Academy Awards. The promise and pull of a coastline peppered with long legs and…
Arizona raises a middle finger to puppy mills with a law that pet stores can only sell shelter dogs
BY: ROB HOFFMAN This summer a federal court stood its ground in an important case that shed light on the country’s dire lack of animal care regulations for the treatment of dogs and cats within pet stores, and where they…
This UK food waste infographic represents an apocalypse of flaming socio-environmental values
It’s easy to point the finger of food-waste at restaurants and big businesses, but the reality is that 50% of the total discarded food in the UK can be found in the garbage cans of peoples’ homes. This equates to…
Photos of children that shook history and the stories that still haunt their photographers
BY: TYLER FYFE There is something deeply disturbing about seeing the soiled innocence of a child. Its power lies in its familiarity. In children we see two visions of the world— visions of our own distorted past and visions of…
Beijing sees crystal blue skies after banning 2.5 million cars to reduce smog
BY: JESSICA BEUKER On September 3 the city of Beijing was unrecognizable. In what is notoriously known for being one of the smoggiest cities in the world, the Chinese capital traded in its grey skies for a vibrant, picture-perfect blue.…
An Airbnb for refugees lets citizens share their homes with immigrants
BY: JESSICA BEUKER The current state of the refugee crisis, in which more than 3.8 million Syrian citizens are fleeing their country to escape violence and religious domination, is being met with a number of positive solutions. Citizens across Europe…
South Korea trolled Kim Jong-un with a K-pop song so hard he almost started a nuclear war
M. TOMOSKI At the Joint Security Area (JSA) of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, guards are always posted. Two stand on the southern side facing north, as you might expect, against potential threats. On the opposite…
The first openly transgender White House official could change American politics
BY: MELISSA MYERS Raffi Freedman-Gurspan is the first openly transgender person to join the White House staff, and a transgender women of colour at that. This announcement comes less than two months after same-sex marriage was declared a right in…