On Wednesday February 6th, President Donald Trump announced that he would nominate David Malpass to be the next president of the World Bank. This follows current World Bank President Jim Yong Kim’s surprise resignation in January. Sources conclude that Kim believes he can make more of an impact in the private sector and he is expected to continue his development work with a firm. Currently, Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank’s CEO, is serving as interim President. As the leadership of the World Bank transitions, it raises two major questions: who is David Malpass and why does the President of the United States decide who heads the World Bank?

In recent years, wildfires have wrought havoc across the American West.  Each year, flames tear through hundreds of thousands of acres and destroy thousands of structures; some years, scores of individuals lose their lives.  In California, the 2017 Tubbs Fire and 2018 Camp Fire set back-to-back, ignominious records for the most destructive fires in state history.  And this duet of record-setting blazes was no one-off occurrence – wildfires out West have become increasingly larger and more intense over the past four decades.

It’s an election year. Politics and policy conversations –whether intelligent or not- seem to be everywhere. This election cycle we have heard quite a bit about the economy but surprisingly not much about entitlements – at least not since the Republican primary ended. This is surprising considering entitlement spending accounts for nearly half of the federal government’s budget.  That makes the issue an obvious channel for candidates to illustrate their particular politics on the role of government, government spending, and the economy. Not only that, but it is an issue that impacts every voter, whether they are retired, close to retirement, or paying taxes to fund others’ retirement. However, this election cycle, strangely enough, louder, more colorful topics have trumped the political arena and national conversation.

Earlier this month the New York Times published another article noting how widely personal geospatial data is shared and how easily identifiable it is. It features the usual spokespeople, consumers who thought they understood their privacy risks only to be shocked by the granularity of information The Times readily discovered about their lives: how long they spent at a doctor’s office, how frequently they spent the night at an ex’s house, and when they flew out of town.

This investigation is one of many sounding the alarm about the privacy breaches created by widespread location tracking and data publication.

On July 26, 2017, President Donald Trump announced to the world that the United States military would no longer allow transgender people to serve as military personnel. Over the span of three tweets, he argued that transgender individuals create costs and cause disruption, impacting the US military’s effectiveness and readiness. Since the announcement, there has been a lively discourse between the LGBTQ+ community and its allies and those who support the ban. The question remains; is a ban on all transgender military personnel feasible?