Until recently, the Syrian city of Homs was the country's third largest, with an estimated population of more than 800,000. As you can see from this drone footage, The Siege of Homs left much of the city destroyed and its population displaced.
Are cities the new countries? →
The OECD raises the question about whether such cities are "now the most relevant level of governance, small enough to react swiftly and responsively to issues and large enough to hold economic and political power".
It stirs echoes of the long history of city states, like Italian cities during the Renaissance, with wealth and creativity operating within civic fiefdoms, rather than national boundaries.
What Bernie Sanders Has Already Won →
...With uncomplicated language and simple sincerity, Sanders has rallied millions of Democrats under the banner of “democratic socialism”—a kind of neo–New Deal liberalism, set against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s attempted synthesis of Great Society policies and Third Way politics—and moved “socialist” from the realm of epithet to legitimate label.
Win or lose, that counts. It’s the Democratic analogue to Reagan’s 1976 primary against Gerald Ford—a sign of the times and of the future. If Sanders wins Iowa, New Hampshire, and the nomination, then he’ll bring (or drag) the Democratic Party to the left. If he loses, then he’ll represent the largest faction in the party, with the power to hold a President Hillary Clinton accountable and even shape her administration, from appointments and nominations to regulatory policy.
...
The Iowa caucus will make or break the Sanders campaign. Without a win, it’s hard to see his path to the nomination. But it means little for his legacy. Sanders is already a historic candidate—the first socialist in a century to build a genuine mass movement in American party politics. And whatever the Democratic Party is in the next 20 or 30 years, it will owe a great deal to Sanders and all the people—young or otherwise—who felt the Bern.
As W.H.O. Deems Zika a Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies →
Behind the Zika headlines, there are underlying drivers of disease risk that are not getting sufficient attention. Climate change and El Nino have been mentioned, and – as with any pest and illness restricted to certain temperature zones – can be factors.
But most important is the simple fact that, after a burst of effective mosquito eradication decades ago, a host of countries (Brazil in particular) relaxed such efforts, and did so just as humanity’s boom in urbanization and global mobility got into high gear.
In essence, the tropics are not facing a Zika emergency nearly as much as they are facing an Aedes aegypti emergency.
This mosquito species thrives in trash-strewn, puddly cities, bites in daylight (limiting the utility of bed nets) and has long posed a peril by carrying a host of dangerous ailments, including yellow fever, chikungunya and dengue.
Zika is simply the newest globe-hopping hitchhiker.
Putting A Price Tag On The Stress Of Having A Child →
It would be one thing if the rhetorical Village actually helped raise the child.
Neat little paper. Seeing more of these kinds of studies (including ones like those cited in the article which look at overall happiness). With any luck, this will lead to a better balance on society.
A Bad News Roundup -- We Can't Do Cybersecurity. Period. →
As for the first of the linked articles, "Pentagon Delays Cybersecurity Requirements," that should be no surprise. There are few costs imposed on businesses when data breaches happen. Nearly all of it is born by the rest of us. But that this is also the case in the intelligence community is telling; noone cares about cyber security (yet).
With Imposed Transparency and Concerned Millennials, a Boom in Corporate Responsibility? →
Way back in 2008, I wrote about Wal-Mart’s emerging effort to cut environmental and social harms from its business operations by exerting influence back along globe-spanning supply chains.
There were, of course, lots of issues, including this one, as I wrote at the time: “Wal-Mart is still selling consumerism even as it pledges to cut the social and environmental costs of making the stuff in its stores.”
...
Here are some factors that appear to be driving the shift...
Obama is taking new actions to try to close the gender wage gap →
...On Friday he announced that the government is going to start collecting data on employee demographics and salaries from all large employers, not just federal contractors.
The new move is going to expand one of Obama's two April 2014 executive actions to promote equal pay.
One of those actions prohibited federal contractors from punishing employees who discuss their salaries with each other. The other required federal contractors to submit data on what they pay their employees, sorted by race, gender, and ethnicity. The latter rule is being expanded to include all businesses with more than 100 employees, not just federal contractors. The first report will be due September 2017, and the data is expected to cover about 63 million workers.