“When we talk about mass killing, we talk about it as criminal homicide,” James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University, tells me. “And, generally, killing related to military operations, wartime, etc., is not criminal homicide. It’s homicide, but not criminal homicide.” Although there are times when American troops kill civilians and are prosecuted […]

The high court’s ruling signals that Puerto Rico is out of practical options and has little alternative but to await for Washington’s fiscally castigating hammer to fall. Budgetary retribution is expected to come in the form of a federally appointed control board empowered to bypass the budgetary powers of the island’s elected governor and legislature. […]

Banning the Washington Post from covering his campaign rallies isn’t just a sign of Donald Trump’s distrust of the press. Reporters are an early warning system. History shows that politicians who turn against the media and cut off their access don’t stop there. Remember Richard Nixon. Nixon made no bones about it — he hated […]

It has now been three years since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program. It was the largest breach of classified material in U.S. history, heroic by some lights, traitorous by others. What cannot be denied is that Snowden’s actions triggered a national debate about civil liberties, surveillance, and […]

Online propaganda is merely stoking the fire rather than igniting it, some experts said. “Imagine if Match.com were set up in such a way that the people could never meet,” said Max Abrahms, a professor at Northeastern University who has studied extremist groups. “Clearly there’s no replacement for actual socialization in person.”

Amazon doesn’t reveal the specific formula for deciding which seller gets featured—nor how much it favors Amazon products itself—but it is upfront that it looks at factors other than just price, including stock, customer service, and fast shipping. But a new study, by three researchers at Northeastern University, found another factor may have a perhaps […]

PK Agarwal holds one of the more unusual posts in academia — he is regional dean and CEO of Northeastern University Silicon Valley. “Northeastern has a disruptive view of the future,” said Agarwal, explaining why he is running a campus all the way across the continent from the university’s home base in Boston. The university […]

Law enforcement officials have described the shooting at the gay nightclub in Orlando as a terrorist act. The shooter expressed solidarity with Islamic State in a 911 call. “Terrorism is often said to have a political motivation. But take the politics out and they look a lot like other mass killings in the U.S.: hate-motivated acts […]

“You have to consider traffic from an entire affected area. There are millions and millions of people,” says Alessandro Vespignani, a disease modeling researcher at Northeastern University who is working on modeling how Zika spreads. “The addition to the risk with the Olympics is extremely small.” The Olympics will account for only 1 or 2 […]

Police departments across the country are grappling with how to effectively manage this new stream of evidence. Should body camera footage be treated like any other police record? Or is there something unique about the footage that requires unique legislation like the bill proposed in North Carolina? To find out, Pacific Standard spoke with experts […]

Once a year, when Slava Epstein was growing up in Moscow, his mother took him to the Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy, a showcase for the wonders of Soviet life. The expo featured many things—from industrial harvesters to Uzbek wine—but Epstein, who began going in the nineteen-sixties, when he was eight or […]

We have witnessed other recent mass killings based on hate, including Dylann Roof’s slaying of nine black churchgoers in Charleston and Wade Michael Page’s shooting of six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc. In such killings, the killer seeks to send a message to an international audience. His purpose is to rid […]