Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

Lawmakers in red, blue, and purple states have put in place a range of reforms to save money, lower crime rates, and give offenders the chance to rejoin society as productive, law-abiding citizens. It’s long past time for the federal government to do the same.

In Washington, conventional wisdom has long held that Iran’s presence south of the US border constitutes little more than an axis of annoyance. In this telling, Iran’s activities in Central and South America - from numerous commercial and trade deals with various nations to the establishment of cultural centers throughout the region - are disorganized, opportunistic, and ultimately of little consequence.

Now, almost a decade after the Great Recession hit, the story of its origins and course has become familiar. It began in December 2007, soon after the US housing bubble burst, triggering the widespread collapse of the US financial system. Credit dried up, as banks lost confidence in the value of their assets and stopped lending to one another. Consumer spending plummeted. At first, the US Federal Reserve tried to boost spending through traditional monetary policy, by reducing short-term interest rates.

In every single region of the world, economic growth has failed to return to the rate it averaged before the Great Recession. Economists have come up with a variety of theories for why this recovery has been the weakest in postwar history, including high indebtedness, growing income inequality, and excess caution induced by the original debt crisis.

Many in Israel and beyond remain convinced that the traditional model of the Middle East peace process has come very close to success in recent decades. But the model of change embodied in the Oslo Accords failed, and if tried again, it will fail again. Only a fundamentally different approach to change—call it bottom-up rather than top-down—can end the underlying conflict.

When neighborhood dogs keep turning up dead, Peter commits himself to finding the killer. His investigation leads him nowhere - until it doesn't. It isn't long before Peter finds himself on the ultimate quest for truth.

Women in 22nd-century sovereign America are expected to be seen and not heard. Caitriona Hayden did not get that memo. As she struggles to make her way in the world after her powerful uncle dies, being "seen" is the least of Cait's problems.

These stories introduce us not only to ordinary people seeking to live extraordinary lives, but also to the skunk ape (a southern variant of Bigfoot), the ghost of Jesse James, and a bone-tired Jack the Giant Killer. Whether it's Appalachia, Nashville, the Carolina Coast, or a make-believe land of talking dogs, each world Earley creates is indelible.

In 1982, at the height of Guatemala’s civil war, 20 soldiers from the army’s commando unit, called the Kaibiles, invaded the farming village of Dos Erres. Masquerading as leftist guerillas, the squad members cut their way through the small town, killing more than 250 men, women, and children. Only a handful of people survived. One of them, a young boy, was adopted by Kaibil lieutenant Ramrez and raised by Ramrez’s family, who named him Oscar. Just three years old at the time of the massacre, Oscar grew up unaware of his true origins. It wasn’t until almost 30 years later, living in the suburbs of Boston with a family of his own, that Oscar would learn the truth.

Much ink has been spilled on the collapse of European social democracy. Much less talked about, but just as brutal, has been the decline of German conservatism.

In 2017, as crucial elections loom across Europe, the EU will no longer be able to defer hard questions about the migrant crisis. It will test the European project’s liberal values and the EU’s commitment to the international system for protecting refugees that many of its member states have championed for more than half a century.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s unprecedented repression of peaceful and nonviolent opposition has created a fertile environment for extremists and radical ideologies. The longer Egypt’s government maintains its repressive policies, the more radicalized and violent its Islamists will become.

On June 2, three North Korean restaurant workers who fled from their jobs in China arrived in South Korea. In April, another 13 restaurant workers made a similar escape. The workers were part of a North Korean initiative to earn cash for the regime when aid from the Soviet Union dried up and a massive famine struck in the 1990s. The regime continues to send its citizens to work overseas and bring in revenue for the state.

Ancient Rome was a village that grew into a world empire. At the peak of its territorial reach, AD 117, it stretched from the British Isles to Mesopotamia and from the Rhine to the Sahara. Its history spans more than a millennium. Before the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century, Romans enjoyed a standard of living not seen again in the West until the mid-nineteenth century. They had flush toilets, granite countertops, indoor heating, and even cosmetic dentistry.

Helen Greiner, co-founder of iRobot and founder of CyPhy Works, talks to Foreign Affairs about robots, Star Wars, and how to bring futuristic technology to market.

Recent surveys conducted in Syria reveal that Islamist fighters are surprisingly supportive of democracy. Here's why.

Shinzo Abe is trying to restore Japanese consumer confidence by boosting inflation. But confidence must rest on something more substantive: meaningful structural reforms to reverse Japanese companies' lagging competitiveness. Otherwise, any temporary economic boost will soon give way to disillusion.

Allan Pinkerton sat in the reception area of the Executive Mansion, wondering if he had made a mistake by coming. Many men would have been intimidated by the prospect of meeting with the President of the United States of America, but that wasn’t what was bothering Pinkerton. In fact, he had sat in the same chair in that outer office many times before, waiting to see the current president’s predecessor.

Fifteen years after saving only one of two drowning identical twin girls, Dave Quinn meets Anne, a struggling Canadian artist and the woman he had rescued as a child, who is drawn back to the scene of the old tragedy by the specter of her dead sister, who is out to avenge her missed chances and live.

It is said that bad things come in threes. If there’s any truth to that, the first two were sure as hell about to show up at my front door. I hadn’t been home long, maybe a half hour or so spent watching the lingering remnants of the Kona sunset leach from the sky while I tipped a cold bottle of Asahi to my lips. I had skipped my regular visit to Snyder’s bar, and had dropped in at Lola’s instead, in order to catch a little face time with Lani, who bartended there.