As more personal information is collected up by ever-more-powerful computers, giant sets of data – big data – have become available for not only legitimate uses but also abuses.

Big data has an enormous potential to revolutionize...

The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) serves an important role in our nation’s fight against hunger. Formerly known as food stamps, SNAP helps 45 million low-income Americans – nearly half of whom are children –...

For over a year, I’ve been documenting the lives of three long-term drug users – Marie, Cheryl and Johnny – who are participating in Vancouver’s heroin-assisted clinical study and program.

In recent years, heroin use in North America has exploded into an “epidemic.” At the same time, policymakers and the public...

In 1473, Alexander Hardynge, who had finished his bachelor’s degree at Oxford nearly two years previous, borrowed money through an educational loan service. The loan came with a one year repayment deadline.

With some of that...

Two bombings in Brussels have killed dozens of people and injured over 100, only days after one of the Paris attackers was arrested in the city’s Molenbeek suburb. The Islamic State (ISIS) has reportedly claimed the attack.

As they recover from the shock of the attacks, people are asking why this happens, and who the people carrying out these...

After over three decades of living in the United States, one thing that I have learned is never to assume that I understand American domestic politics. Every time I think I grasp where it is going, I am eventually dumbfounded.

So I tread on eggshells when venturing onto that terrain. And given my own lack of predictive powers, I view anyone who...

The world is currently transfixed by the spectacle of American elections.

From New York, London and Paris to Beijing, Moscow, and Sydney there is endless heated debate in the news media and across dinner tables about the factors fueling the remarkable success of Donald Trump, speculation about a brokered convention shattering the old GOP, and the...

Blondes are often stereotyped as dumb.

The dumb female blonde is a staple of Hollywood movies, such as Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde.” Amazon currently sells many joke books that poke fun at blondes’ perceived lack of intelligence.

While they are derided for...

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s protectionist prescriptions have led to renewed speculation about whether trade wars are on the horizon.

In other words, if, under a Trump presidency, the United States were to raise its tariffs against some of its biggest trading partners – China, Japan, Mexico – would those...

Imagine going through your day without ready access to clean water for drinking, cooking, washing or bathing. Around the world, 663 million people face that challenge every day. They get their water from sources that are considered unsafe because they are vulnerable to contamination, such as rivers, streams, ponds and unprotected wells. And the...