Seven years after the United Nations assumed control of the Serb province of Kosovo, talks are underway about its future. Orthodox Church leaders for the minority Serb population, which has been subject to attacks for years by Muslim extremists, are hoping to forestall mounting pressure to establish an independent state. Is the Church headed for extinction in Kosovo? Read mentary here. ...

Steve Wozniak, famed inventor of Apple I, Apple II, and the original Apple software, has a new ing out. Here is a snippet from a Businessweek interview where he gives a nice, Actony take on creativity and education. Are there larger lessons that you have drawn about creativity and innovation? That schools close us off from creative development. They do it because education has to be provided to everyone, and that means that government has to provide it, and that’s...

New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers has a lengthy — and chilling — narrative on the terrorist attack on Beslan, Russia, that began on September 1, 2004. Chechen separatists took over School Number One, filled with children and parents on the first day of the academic year, and wired the place with bombs. A rescue attempt by Russian security forces three days later turned into a pitched battle and when it was over, 331 people were dead — including 186...

The Rock Star, sounding kind of Acton-ish: Bono acknowledges that four years ago when he toured Africa with then U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, bringing private sector with him would never have crossed his mind. It’s a signal of changes in Africa over the past decade, but in part it’s Bono’s own advocacy that has helped shift attitudes toward the African agenda. “I think it is bizarre that Africa got me interested merce,” chuckles the U2 lead singer in an...

I blogged last week on the ongoing dispute between China and the Vatican. Another demographic giant with tremendous economic potential—and some religious freedom issues—is India. ZENIT reports on Pope Benedict’s address to the new Indian ambassador to the Holy See (May 18 daily dispatch). The pope took the opportunity to make a ment on the subject: The disturbing signs of religious intolerance which have troubled some regions of the nation, including the reprehensible attempt to legislate clearly discriminatory restrictions on...

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Warsaw this morning, the start of his four-day pilgrimage in intensely Catholic Poland and the home of his predecessor, John Paul II. After his ing remarks at the airport, the pope traveled to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist where he gave a splendid address on the meaning of the priesthood. The entire text is worth reading but here’s an excerpt: The faithful expect only one thing from priests: that they be specialists in...

A couple years ago I wrote mentary that didn’t exactly defend outsourcing, but did recognize its benefits and argued that it could be done morally if done correctly. I won’t pretend that my writing is read widely enough to generate voluminous responses of any sort, but that piece did elicit a significant number of responses, many of them negative. Several correspondents, who had no personal connection to me, ostensibly knew a great deal about me, including my salary and the...

The researchers report that “latent heat loss from the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean was less in late spring and early summer 2005 than preceding years due to anomalously weak trade winds associated with weaker sea level pressure,” which “resulted in anomalously high sea surface temperatures” that “contributed to earlier and more intense hurricanes in 2005.” However, they go on to note that “these conditions in the Atlantic and Caribbean during 2004 and 2005 were not unprecedented and were equally favorable...

Earlier today, Rev. Robert A. Sirico delivered an address as a part of the 2006 Lord Acton Lecture Series entitled “The Eye of the Needle: Economic Lessons from the Parables.” For those who were unable to attend the lecture personally, we are pleased to be able to provide the audio of today’s event in downloadable form – just click here (10 mb mp3 file). ...

This Live Science article, “How Children Learn About God and Science,” by Robert Roy Britt, summarizes a new survey of scientific studies about the way children learn. It seems that an interesting conclusion has surfaced from these studies: “Among things they can’t see, from germs to God, children seem to be more confident in the information they get about invisible scientific objects than about things in the spiritual realm.” There’s no conclusive explanation for why this is the case, but...