Topic: Focus
All Content
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Focus In the end, NSA might not need to snoop so secretly
NSA data-collection programs have spawned support and criticism. But in an era when many Americans already know their personal information is being gathered, perhaps being more open about it would help, some say.
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Focus Not sci-fi: Researchers work toward post-trauma limb regeneration
Researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., are working on what they call the next logical frontier: easing the human body into fully repairing and regenerating itself.
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Focus 'Exponential' progress in prosthetics helps ease tough path for amputees
People who lost arms or legs in the Boston Marathon bombings – and in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – are among some 2 million Americans coping with limb loss. Emerging technologies and expanded peer support programs are helping.
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Focus Turkey's protests reveal conflicting visions of society
The ongoing clashes in Istanbul's Taksim Square have exposed the fault lines running between those want to protect secular values and those who want to introduce more Islam into public life.
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Focus Turkey's tumultuous week does little to rattle 'bulldozer' Erdogan
Prime Minister Erdogan decried antigovernment protesters as 'vagabonds' and 'extremists.' Critics acknowledge his success in driving Turkey's spectacular growth, but say he has become autocratic.
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Focus Masai herders appear victims of land deal with Dubai hunting firm
Tanzania plans to move Maasai families off ancestral land, claiming environmental necessity to protect wildebeest.
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Focus East Africans told to resettle: Are these 'land grabs' or progress?
In Ethiopia, a plan known as 'villagization' has freed up vast tracts for foreign corporations and brought a storm over methods of development at the World Bank.
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Focus Bulger trial and the FBI: How have rules about informants changed?
James 'Whitey' Bulger is not the only one facing scrutiny as his trial begins Tuesday. So is the FBI, which infamously used Bulger as an informant for years. Today the FBI relies more heavily than ever on confidential informants, but under new rules.
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Focus Bulger trial marks close of an era. But what new organized crime lurks?
Reputed mobster James 'Whitey' Bulger is among the last of his kind, as old-style crime bosses give way to criminal groups that are more fluid, more likely to span international borders, and more reliant on modern technologies.
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Focus In Bangladesh factory aftermath, US and European firms take different paths
The deadly collapse of a Bangladesh garment factory has galvanized European firms to try and improve working conditions, but US companies have been slower to respond. Why?
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Focus Could Indonesia's garment industry guide Bangladesh?
Indonesia has reformed its clothing industry since the sweatshop-plagued 1990s, and may offer a model for Bangladesh to improving labor standards while also remaining competitive.
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Focus When disaster strikes America, a more skilled response
The Oklahoma tornado is the latest bout of extreme weather to require an all-out emergency response. Quick and efficient, the reaction in Moore, Okla., points to a nation getting better at coping with natural disasters.
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Focus Terrorist watch lists: Are they working as they should?
Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was one of 875,000 names in a database the US uses to produce at least nine watch lists, but the naming didn't prevent the attack. Some security experts worry that data overload may be hindering US counterterrorism efforts.
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Focus One man's escape from Camp 14 and North Korea
Only one prisoner born in North Korea's gulag is known to have escaped to tell his story. A Q&A with Blaine Harden, the journalist who wrote about Shin Dong-hyuk.
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Focus North Korea's hidden labor camps exposed
A new UN panel is vowing to hold North Korea's Kim regime to 'full accountability' for decades of mass crime and murder. Will Pyongyang face ICC indictment?
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Focus Education reform's next big thing: Common Core standards ramp up
Common Core standards are aimed at building students' critical thinking skills, and 46 states have adopted them. But critics say the methods are unproven and the education reform is moving too fast.
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Focus Common Core promises new tests. Will they be better than the old ones?
Even before teachers have switched to new Common Core curriculum, new assessment tests are in the works. Teachers hope they'll be better than the current fill-in-the-bubble ones.
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Focus Excitement fades to despair in rebel-held Syria as war grinds on
Early rebel optimism in Syria has given way to a grim realization that victory may still be years away. For the past two months, civilians have been fleeing Syria at a rate of 8,000 per day.
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Focus Syria: Damaged landmarks await peace, restoration
The loss of a famous mosque's minaret brought world attention to threats facing Syrian landmarks. But the Umayyad Mosque is just one in a long list of ancient monuments damaged by fighting.
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Focus 'Provoking peace' in Indonesia
Christians and Muslims in Ambon, Indonesia, have relearned how to live together after a 1999 - 2002 war killed 5,000 people and displaced half a million.
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Focus Big Three automakers, reinvented, eye consumers worldwide
GM, Ford, and Chrysler have reinvented themselves in the years since the Great Recession almost spelled the demise of two of the Big Three automakers. Their 'transformative' evolution puts them in a position to compete globally.
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Focus Lower wages now at Big Three automakers, but new hires aren't whining
A sixth-generation GM worker is delighted to have landed a job at the US automaker, even if her wages and benefits don't hold a candle to what her own father made there. Such jobs, it seems, are still prized.
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Focus With no jobs in the city, country life is coming back to Spain
After decades of population loss to cities, rural areas in Spain – and across Europe – have been gaining allure as havens from the ongoing recession.
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Focus Spanish urban entrepreneurs yield to the lure of rural living
Spain's rural development is on the rise, thanks in part to entrepreneurs and professionals like Juan Hurtado, who is transforming an old train station into a cooperative living community.
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Focus Was Shane Todd murdered over high-tech secrets?
Shane Todd, a US citizen working in Singapore, believed he had access to restricted tech. His death in 2012 was by suicide, say local authorities. But his family, suspecting murder, wants the FBI to take part in the investigation.
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