A World Digital Library is coming together after an agreement signed yesterday between Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communications and Information, and James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress in the USA’s Library of Congress. The project was started in 2005 by a $3 million grant from Google. The project aims is to create [...]

Several nation leaders in Latin America seem to be waking up to the fact that International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) loans aren’t truly benefiting the majority of people there, so they are joining forces to create Banco del Sur. Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay have become the founding members to Banco [...]

Now when pollution and global warming seem to be an accepted concern, people around the world are trying to come up with new option for running their cars (instead of opting for NOT running their cars, but that’s another story). Brazil has had great success with ethanol produced from sugar cane, and the USA has [...]

Today, Martin Strel, became the first person to swim the entire Amazon River. Strel completed his journey in 66 days, and averaged about 52 miles a day. His journey began in Peruvian territory and ended in the city of Belem, just north of Rio de Janeiro, Bazil. Amazingly he had a pretty easy time with [...]

This week I got to visit the Framingham Public Library to see their Newcomer & Neighbors Center. The city has seen a large growth in their immigrant populations, and currently about 20% of the city’s residents are foreign born. Because the local library saw a need in these new communities, and because it wanted to [...]

Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva has just announced a plan to make the country’s Amazon region internet accessible! The belief is that Indigenous communities can participate in the struggle to protect the rain forest, and by providing them with free internet access, they will be better equipped to respond to any illegal activities in the [...]

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization trying to address the lack of resources many Third World Countries struggle with and how these affect education and hinder technological development. Keeping in mind that many countries can only afford to spend $20 per child per year on education (compared to about $7,500 that the [...]

A couple of days ago, the UK’s Guardian published a story about record breaking remittances going to Latin America. The high numbers involved shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone who regularly interacts with immigrants. Immigrants, especially those who come alone often work well over full time and live in crowded homes in order [...]