Fortune Puerto Rico’s debt crisis is about to get worse Puerto Rico’s debt, just over $70 billion, is comparable with Argentina’s—around $93 billion at the start of its 2001 crisis. Puerto Rico’s debt-to-GDP ratio of 70% isn’t too remote from Argentina’s 2001 ratio of 65%. In a debt crisis, governments can increase taxes and fees and reduce government services. Puerto Rico has already done so. […]
CNET News Facebook’s trending news feed may be a sham Journalism experts and media commentators are crying foul. Facebook’s trending topics list was assumed to be a list of the most popular things on Facebook, they say, not a curated list of what Facebook’s employees think is relevant. “With Facebook’s trending stories, we had every right to think that this represented the wisdom of the […]
WGBH Print nostalgia is still with us, but it’s not going to save the news business Editor & Publisher, a trade magazine that covers the newspaper business, posted a story last week predicting a startling technological change in the way we consume news. Believe it or not, it would involve grinding trees into pulp, transforming that pulp into paper, printing news articles, photos, and ads on that paper, and then loading […]
WGBH Former Mass. Gov. Dukakis: North-south rail link would “pay for itself” “It’s important to understand that both South and North station are getting increasingly congested,” he said. “We’re getting perilously close to a point where we’re not going to be able to get any more trains into those stations. Both of them, by the way. The answer from the [MBTA] over the course of the past […]
The Hill Doctor mandate moving to center of opioid fight Up to now, the FDA has moved cautiously on opioids, doing little beyond requiring “black box” warnings for the most dangerous painkillers in 2013 and 2016 and sending a open letter to ask prescribers to “ensure they have adequate training in opioid therapy” in 2013. “A lot of reasons why things have taken so long […]
Boston Magazine Six tips for using standing desks correctly Chances are, you know somebody who switched to a standing desk after reading those sobering studies about how bad sitting is for your health. The problem is, though, ergonomic guidelines for using the desks are scant, so arranging them can involve a lot of guesswork. Jack Dennerlein, a professor in the Northeastern University Department of […]
The constitutional fight over delay Justice Stephen Breyer may be the only current member of the Supreme Court to have argued that the inevitably long delays death row prisoners suffer before execution is a significant factor leading to the unconstitutionality of the death penalty but his persistence in arguing for this position has provoked passionate rejoinders. Just recently Breyer dissented […]
PCWorld How the skills shortage is transforming big data In the early days of computing, developers were often jacks of all trades, handling virtually any task needed for software to get made. As the field matured, jobs grew more specialized. Now we’re seeing a similar pattern in a brand-new domain: big data. That’s according to P.K. Agarwal, regional dean and CEO of Northeastern University’s […]
Salon Understanding terrorism: Attacks have a political logic, although they are usually ineffective, scholar says Terrorism is clearly reprehensible. Yet media reports and politicians often present terrorist attacks as if they are less calculated than they really are. Scientific research shows that this view is mistaken. Terrorism scholars have found that, leaving aside the question of immorality, there is an internal political logic to terrorist attacks — although they are […]
Reject isolationism There is a massive transformation taking place around the world. Our leading corporations are going global. Health and medicine and film are going global. And you don’t have to be great at math to understand that our economy can’t grow if we don’t sell things to the 95 percent of the world’s customers who live in […]
South Coast Today What happens to seized drug money on SouthCoast? Jack Levin, a criminologist and professor emeritus at Northeastern University, said critics could argue that prosecutors might have a vested interest in punishing offenders for their drug abuse simply because they benefit. “Whether you can prove that with statistics is another thing,” he said. District attorneys, though, like the idea of taking illegally earned money […]
UPI Kerry to Northeastern graduates: ‘You are Donald Trump’s worst nightmare’ U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry addressed issues that include climate change, disease and terrorism and touched on the upcoming presidential election while speaking at Northeastern University’s commencement ceremony. Kerry made a quip regarding Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump early in his speech as he mentioned the diversity of the graduating class, noting that students […]