The official attitude towards rock has, of course, changed over the years, from extreme ideological rejection in the first decades of the Revolution, to a certain acceptance.

The average citizen usually has to trust scientists -- whose word he or she has to take on faith almost as much as a religious believer takes the word of a priest.

Barack Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize while delivering -- to the world as it is -- a pro-war speech.

The author of "Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan" discusses how aid from the West affects the relationships between men and women.

Environmental catastrophe no longer looms. Catastrophe is upon us.

How people market themselves when their business happens to be illegal.

Can climate change science recover from the damage done by leaked emails?

Our elected leaders often implement security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything actually to improve their security.

Jagdish Bhagwati on the trouble with protectionism, how to deal with climate change, and why NAFTA was bad for trade.

Former special forces operative and now bestselling novelist, Duncan Falconer, has lived a life stranger than fiction. Now part of a unit tackling pirates off the Gulf of Aden, Nick Ryan meets the man who could be a real-life James Bond.

Awarding the world's most prestigious economics prize to a scholar who champions cooperative behavior greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our environmental problems.

Faith in Sufi mysticism has for centuries been the defining characteristic of Islam in Kashmir, commanding awe and respect, never shock and suspicion.

Was the alleged perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre a "jihobbyist"? The recent book "Global Jihadism" explains how ordinary folks scan the Internet and get lured in by the well-crafted marketing of Global Jihadist Web sites.

After long decline, Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish, enjoys a modest revival in Turkey.

Researcher Bill Leavenworth collects logs from the mid-1800s, which offer clues about yesterday's -- and today's -- cod stocks.

When natural resources which should be held in common are privatised, common people are deprived of their sources of sustenance.

It now takes just a minor grudge to pull off a public hunger strike.

The very idea of an "Islamic state" -- so dear to some Muslims -- is totally un-Islamic.

As the war in Afghanistan intensifies, the pressure on military rescue teams is mounting.

Has our panic over terrorism given permission for unchecked abuse?