All From the Editors

Philanthropy is a word often associated with top hats and tote bags. But its original and essential meaning -- going back to the ancient Greeks -- is even more generous: It is about helping humanity make progress.

Throughout the United States, newspapers are downsizing. Whether or not you shed a tear for journalists, it's worth considering what happens in communities where no one is keeping watch on politicians, public officials, or city streets.

Politics is messy, expensive, comical, infuriating, and often dispiriting -- especially after an interminable US presidential campaign. But voting itself ... that's the real point of democracy.

Amid a protracted economic crisis, Europeans are unsure they want greater integration -- but rightly concerned about backsliding into the nationalistic divisions that long haunted the continent.

Fifty years ago this week, the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Looking back, two superpowers had boxed themselves into confrontation. Looking ahead, leaders must avoid that trap again with Iran and other critical issues.

If you have diligently read the position papers, listened to the speeches, and watched the debates, by now you know a lot about both candidates for president. That's good citizenship -- but it doesn't necessarily mean the next four years will unfold the way you think.

Everyone from the US Census Bureau to the United Nations has a definition of poverty. A reasonable income is unquestionably important. But income alone doesn't determine whether someone is poor. Or rich. 

Like the Bible, the Quran is filled with fiery passages and gentle ones. Some sentences contradict others. But a new way of reading the Muslim holy book -- based on an old way of storytelling -- might shed a very different light on its meaning.

The drought that has hit the United States and other grain-producing nations could be global warming or just a one-season aberration. But while weather fluctuates year to year, global population doesn't. And that means that feeding 9 billion mouths by 2050 will require unprecedented effort.

Artificial intelligence may soon reach the point where it can answer questions that make it seem indistinguishable from human intelligence. But machines and humans are a long way from answering the most basic question of all: Where did intelligence itself come from?

Across the world, women, children, and men are forced or pressured into jobs that keep them in modern-day servitude. Some involve sexual exploitation. Millions more are central to the goods and services the developed world enjoys.

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Here are five reasons: (1) The paycheck. (2) Fulfillment. (3) Sociability. (4) Dignity. (5) The paycheck. And there are hundreds more as workers stay on the job well into their senior years.

Begun as a reform movement in the 19th-century United States, political conventions do little real party business today. Their one redeeming virtue? They are a showcase for political speech.

Nothing is more important in K-12 education than the quality of a teacher. But how do we make great teachers? We could start with someone like Jane Smoot.

The connection between violent images and violent acts is an age-old debate. Recent research appears to show the connection is real. So what's to be done? There's an age-old antidote.

John Muir and Gifford Pinchot represent the two strains of environmentalism in the United States -- and most of us think like both of them. We want nature pristine and undisturbed, but we also rely on its resources and understand the need to use care in extracting them.

As the cream of the world's athletes converge on London for the Olympics, sports scientists say humans may be reaching the limits of their ability to set world records. But that takes nothing away from the drama of athletic competition.

Mass-market campaigning is as passe as mass-market retailing. Politicians and pollsters increasingly slice and dice the electorate into demographic niches and tailor their messages to narrow groups of voters. Who are the 'soccer moms' of 2012?

Women in the US military have been unofficially on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now they are looking to formalize their role.