SAT scores at lowest level in 10 years, fueling worries about high schools →

The average score for the Class of 2015 was 1490 out of a maximum 2400, the College Board reported Thursday. That was down 7 points from the previous class’s mark and was the lowest composite score of the past decade. There were declines of at least 2 points on all three sections of the test — critical reading, math and writing.
...The test results show that gains in reading and math in elementary grades haven’t led to broad improvement in high schools, experts say...
It is difficult to pinpoint a reason for the decline in SAT scores, but educators cite a host of enduring challenges in the quest to lift high school achievement. Among them are poverty, language barriers, low levels of parental education and social ills that plague many urban neighborhoods.

Guatemala President Otto Perez Molina Resigns →

Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina resigned late Wednesday, hours after a judge issued an arrest warrant against the leader in connection to a growing corruption scandal that has plunged the country into its worst political crisis since the end of a brutal civil war.

As tragedies shock Europe, a bigger refugee crisis looms in the Middle East →

Those reaching Europe represent a small percentage of the 4 million Syrians who have fled into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, making Syria the biggest single source of refugees in the world and the worst humanitarian emergency in more than four decades.
As the fighting grinds into a fifth year, the realization is dawning on aid agencies, the countries hosting the refugees and the Syrians themselves that most won’t be going home anytime soon, presenting the international community with a long-term crisis that it is ill-equipped to address...

New law permits North Dakota cop drones to fire beanbag rounds from the sky →

There are so many problems (putting it mildly) for tackling this now: the political climate around policing, because of pre-existing problems with brutality and militarization (and, if nothing else, on this last, they're going to spend taxpayer money on toys like this? now? North Dakotans should demand the cost/benefit analysis...); difficulty of firing on an intended target from a mobile platform, especially if there's lag in the signal (any guesses how the public will respond when police accidentally fire--even "non-lethals"!--on bystanders?); little to no law around drone use, for public or private entities; mistrust and dread of drones (highly warranted; see above); relative ease of hacking drones (hey, police, you want to use those fancy, armed drones? better be ready to defend them from hackers willing to turn them on you, or just cause mayhem and throw egg on your face). North Dakota's not NYC or Chicago, so maybe they'll get away with it and provide a very favorable test case , but society-at-large is nowhere close to ready to dealing with this.

How Americans actually feel about stronger gun laws →

But how do people in the United States actually feel about the country’s gun laws as they currently stand? In short: There is a lot of disagreement about some proposals and gun ownership itself, but when it comes to a few particular areas, polls show Americans are still strongly in favor of adding new policies and restrictions.
Take three specific proposals: Adding background checks to private gun sales, banning people with mental illnesses from buying guns and creating a federal database to track gun sale. Public support for these changes range from very strong to overwhelming, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July.

How ISIL Out-Terrorized Bin Laden →

Longer, but great read.

The Islamic State’s brutality and its insistence on apocalypse now and caliphate now set it apart from al-Qaeda, of which it was a part until 2014. We’re used to thinking of al-Qaeda’s leader Osama bin Laden as the baddest of the bad, but the Islamic State is worse. Bin Laden tamped down messianic fervor and sought popular Muslim support; the return of the early Islamic empire, or caliphate, was a distant dream. In contrast, the Islamic State’s members fight and govern by their own version of Machiavelli’s dictum “It is far safer to be feared than loved.” They stir messianic fervor rather than suppress it. They want God’s kingdom now rather than later. This is not Bin Laden’s jihad.

IoT for food and water: Here’s what the future looks like →

Some really cool technologies being experimented with, aided by small and cheap sensors:

In the near future, IoT will drive tremendous innovation in the way our food is grown, processed, distributed, stored, and consumed. Plants and animals will literally have a “voice.” Not a human voice, per se, but a voice based on data that can tell people, computers, and machines when, for example, they are thirsty, need more sun, require medicine, or need individual attention.