In 1886, the town of great Barrington, Mass., set up the first alternating-current electrical transmission line in the U.S. In the nearly 125 years since, the products we run with electricity have changed incalculably, but in many ways, the massive grid that delivers that power has barely changed at all.

For the past nine years, the drug company Novartis has been selling Coartem, one of the most effective antimalarials on the market, to public-health officials in the developing world at a loss totaling more than $253 million

If you want to know why Denmark is the world's leader in wind power, start with a three-hour car trip from the capital Copenhagen

It was, for a few years in the middle of this decade, the trope that you heard all the time. The global economy, it was said, was a "Goldilocks" one. Just like the bowl of porridge that the child in the fairy tale sampled, it was neither too hot, nor too cold. It was

School is the lastplace most kids would want to spend a Bali holiday but grown-ups will enjoy the lessons at Green School, www.greenschool.org. The Indonesian island's latest attraction is a private international primary and soon-to-be-high school, established to give an education steeped in environmental awareness.

Even though holiday sales were down at least 2% from 2007, millions of Americans awoke Christmas morning to new computers, TVs and iPhones. (I didn't, but thanks for the pens, Mom.) Many of those gifts were replacements or upgrades, which prompts the question, What should you do with your old cell phone and other electronic equipment?

Kevin Conrad
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

China's Premier, Wen Jiabao, is without a doubt the most popular figure in China's top leadership: a graying, grandfatherly standout in a crowd of wooden faces that rarely crack a smile, much less choke up on national television as Wen did after the May earthquake in Sichuan province.

Scot case was not happy. Vice president of the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice, Case last year sent his researchers into a big-box retail store to evaluate the green advertising claims of some of the products on its shelves. The results were startling: of the 1,018 products TerraChoice surveyed, all but one failed to live up fully to their green boasts.

To understand what has happened to the earth's atmosphere--and, therefore, how our climate might change in the future--some ice-core scientists in the Arctic are training their eyes directly downward. It's an incredibly important job. It's also, as the participants in the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project will attest, incredibly fun.

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