One of the biggest problems any new government in Libya will face is something that doesn't seem like a problem: The massive amount of oil wealth the country possesses
Economists call it the natural-resource curse. Resource-rich countries often end up being ruled by dictators and autocrats. And the massive amount of money that floods into a country after oil discovery often has the perverse effect of putting existing industries out of business.
The fallout continues from last year's bloody confrontation between troops from the Israel Defense Forces and activists aboard a Turkish aid flotilla bound for the Gaza coast. Robert Siegel speaks with Omer Taspinar, a Turkish scholar who is at the National War College and the Brookings institution.
Zoe Keating's latest album is titled Into the Trees, and that's exactly where I have to go to meet her. She lives in the middle of a redwood forest, an hour and a half north of San Francisco. As Keating walks me around, we listen for her neighbors, the woodpeckers, who she says are extra-noisy in the evening.
It's fitting to find Keating in the middle of all this natural noise. In her studio, she creates a similar symphony of sounds, except she does it with just one instrument: her cello.
Several commemorative events and a fundraiser are planned this week marking the one year anniversary of the Four Mile Canyon fire west of Boulder which destroyed 169 homes and damaged scores more.
When I was a kid, I assumed that in the future things would get better and better until we were all driving flying cars and playing badminton with space aliens on top of 500-story buildings. Frankly, I kind of counted on this happening. But now I don't assume that we'll just keep going up anymore.
