Category: news

There were at least 2,354 ransomware attacks on local governments, health care facilities and schools in the U.S. last year. Although estimates vary, losses to ransomware seem to have tripled in 2020 to more than US$300,000 per incident.

A recurring theme in many of these breaches is misplaced trust – in vendors, employees, software and hardware. As a scholar of cybersecurity policy with a recent report on this topic, I have been interested in questions of trust.

Liz Cheney reveres order. Donald Trump detests it.

Simple, yes, but that sums up the difference between the elected but exiled U.S. congresswoman and the exiled but elected-in-his-own-mind former president.

Countless critics have detailed Trump’s disruptive effects on national life, but Cheney’s call for order deserves attention. She offers a coherent, conservative alternative to Trumpist populism. As a scholar of American political speeches, I think it important to assess her persuasive force as well as her deep roots in the conservative tradition.

Despite the proven benefits of revision, students often resist making change to the initial versions of what they wrote – because it requires additional effort. Or, if they do revise, they only do it in a mediocre way.

Learning how to revise one’s writing is something that will serve students well in a variety of ways. Research shows that while writing is an effective way to help students learn content in different subject areas, revision helps them to develop a deeper conceptual understanding of the topic on which they are writing.

The images and reports coming from Israel, Jerusalem and Gaza in recent days are shocking. They are also surprising to those who thought the 2020 Abraham Accords and subsequent agreements to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan would place the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians permanently on the backburner.

Just about every indicator of drought is flashing red across the western U.S. after a dry winter and warm early spring. The snowpack is at less than half of normal in much of the region. Reservoirs are being drawn down, river levels are dropping and soils are drying out.

It’s only May, and states are already considering water use restrictions to make the supply last longer. California’s governor declared a drought emergency in 41 of 58 counties. In Utah, irrigation water providers are increasing fines for overuse. Some Idaho ranchers are talking about selling off livestock because rivers and reservoirs they rely on are dangerously low and irrigation demand for farms is only just beginning.

· There are no easy solutions to shoring up U.S. national cyber defenses.

· Software supply chains and private sector infrastructure companies are vulnerable to hackers.

· Many U.S. companies outsource software development because of a talent shortage, and some of that outsourcing goes to companies in Eastern Europe that are vulnerable to Russian operatives.

· U.S. national cyber defense is split between the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, which leaves gaps in authority.

Markets, economists and policymakers, have been fretting about inflation for months, worried that the trillions of dollars being spent in recent and future government stimulus programs could overheat the economy and send prices soaring.

On May 12, 2021, the worrywarts seemed to have their fears confirmed when the April consumer price index shot up a seasonally adjusted 0.8%, the biggest jump since 2008. The year-over-year inflation rate of 4.2% is double what the Federal Reserve has set as its target.

When reading texts of several hundred words or more, learning is generally more successful when it’s on paper than onscreen. A cascade of research confirms this finding.

The benefits of print particularly shine through when experimenters move from posing simple tasks – like identifying the main idea in a reading passage – to ones that require mental abstraction – such as drawing inferences from a text. Print reading also improves the likelihood of recalling details – like “What was the color of the actor’s hair?” – and remembering where in a story events occurred – “Did the accident happen before or after the political coup?”

While it may seem that much of the world has been locked down during the past pandemic year, more than 80 million people are currently on the move – unwillingly.

Facing conflict in Syria, human rights violations in Myanmar and violence in Eritrea, among other hot spots, refugees are trying to relocate to North America and Western Europe, or at least to neighboring countries.

Large camps of displaced persons can wreak major environmental damage. Refugees use and pollute water, deplete wood supplies for fuel, and poach animals for food, often harming parks, nature reserves and World Heritage Sites. These impacts make host countries less willing to receive more refugees.

Children arriving at the southern border without their parents have presented a political and humanitarian challenge for the past three presidents.

Their numbers began rising considerably after 2009, when 19,418 children were taken into custody at the border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Unaccompanied minors peaked in 2014, with 68,000 apprehensions. Analysts say 2021 is on pace to break that record, with more than 600 children arriving daily to the U.S.-Mexico border. Most are teenagers seeking asylum.