Exploring Iceland's Unique Open Prisons
Iceland's open prisons, Kvíabryggja and another, offer a unique perspective on rehabilitation. With minimal security and a focus on communal living, these facilities prioritize...

After a decade of relatively little rain, California is facing its third year of debilitating drought. The drought has placed a $44.7-billion-a-year agriculture industry, drinking water for millions of people, and some 204 cities located in high-risk fire zones in jeopardy.

Has the United States finally reached peak sprawl? Recent research, including a new study out of the George Washington University School of Business, suggests that the end of the era of automobile-oriented suburban growth is upon us.

Having poor people in the richest country in the world is a choice. We have the money to solve this. But do we have the will? Inequality and poverty are suddenly hot topics, not only in the United States but also across the globe.

Recently we have seen, at the level of city government, all around policies designed to build community wealth and encourage the growth of cooperative local economies. The work of grassroots developers, local foundations, community activists, and field builders is beginning to gain a foothold in the world of municipal policy...

Cooperative Home Care Associates has 2,300 workers who enjoy good wages, regular hours, and family health insurance. With an investment of $1.2 million into the cooperative sector, New York City is hoping to build on the group's success.

The summer employment rate for U.S. teens held steady at around 50% from 1950 to 2000, but began to decline dramatically in the 21st century. By 2009, it had fallen below 33%. The decline has been most pronounced for more educated and economically advantaged teens.

The deep sea is the largest habitat on earth and incredibly important to humans, but it faces many threats – from increased human exploitation to the effects of climate change. As this exploitation expands we need to decide to what extent we will try to conserve the oceans, and this is a decision that must be informed by what the oceans provide.

So far this year, more than 48,000 undocumented minors have been detained while crossing the U.S. border from Mexico. But increasingly, the kids aren't from Mexico. They're from Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, and they're fleeing from violence and poverty in their home countries, according to Reuters.

For some time, the bee population has been steadily declining worldwide, and this is most directly attributed to the negative impact of pesticides. Now, there's a lot of buzz around a recent study by Dutch researchers, which has found that the toxic chemicals we use are having a ripple effect farther up the food chain, causing insectivorous birds to rapidly decline in number.

For years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been frustrated in its efforts to pursue hundreds of cases of water pollution — repeatedly tied up in legal fights about exactly what bodies of water it has the authority to monitor and protect. Efforts in Congress to clarify the EPA's powers have been defeated. And two Supreme Court decisions have done little to decide the question.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) management just ran into a possible game-changing obstacle to its shameful pursuit of a fully privatized post office: labor solidarity.
More than a third of the food produced in the United States winds up in the garbage—a problem that some states, particularly in New England, are trying to tackle for financial and environmental reasons. Massachusetts is banning businesses from dumping leftovers in landfills. So what’s the best alternative?

On the heels of what many are calling a historic convention of over 1,200 fast food workers held in the Chicago suburbs last weekend, the campaign for "$15 and a union" won a major National Labor Relations Board decision that, if upheld, could have significant repercussions throughout the industry...

Over the past two decades, the amount of money a college student must borrow to pay for their education has doubled. The graduates of 2014 now sit at the top of the class in student debt. Tuition fees have risen dramatically as household incomes have stagnated, at best, causing some 70 percent of students to fund their higher educations through loans.

That eating beef is environmentally costly is by now widely appreciated. But little has been done to curtail the amount of cattle farmed for meat consumption.

Facing declining visitors and uncertainty about what to do about it, library administrators in the new town of Almere in the Netherlands did something extraordinary. They redesigned their libraries based on the changing needs and desires of library users and, in 2010, opened the Nieuwe Bibliotheek (New Library), a thriving community hub that looks more like a bookstore than a library.

Globally 1.2 billion people live in areas of water scarcity — defined by the United Nations as locations with an annual water supply that drops below 1,000 cubic meters per person.

Throughout history, local currencies have been used not only as a way to survive during periods of economic uncertainty, but also as a bold way to opt out of a global monetary system that many find exclusionary and, in some cases, corrupt. The only thing that gives modern money value is the fact that...

Nothing shocks me too much anymore about online abuses of privacy. It is hard to know just who you can trust online these days. We are being asked "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes". Well, it appears my eyes haven't been lying too much lately...

What if you asked Americans in largely "red" or Republican districts and largely "blue" or Democratic districts very specific questions about what government should do—about taxes, reproductive rights, foreign affairs, and the like, and 96 percent of the time they agreed? And 69 percent of the time there wasn't even a statistically significant difference ...

The secret ingredient in Boston's prize winning tap water? Forest conservation. If you already love Boston for its unmistakable accent and unpredictable baseball team, you might want to consider adding its tap water to your list. Boston came out on top of this year’s tap water taste test...