Groundwater levels are dropping across a much wider swath of the United States than is generally discussed, according to a new report from the Columbia Water Center.

Early in his career, a scientist named Mario J. Molina was pulled into seemingly obscure research about strange chemicals being spewed into the atmosphere. Within a year, he had helped discover a global environmental emergency, work that would ultimately win aNobel Prize.

This spring, construction is set to begin on the first projects coordinated through Power Africa, a multibillion-dollar Obama administration initiative that seeks to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa within five years, and in some cases accelerate reforms in the governments of the nations involved. Among the initial projects are wind farms in Kenya and Tanzania, and a solar project in Tanzania.

The approved budget for United Nations peacekeeping operations from July 2013 to June 2014 runs to $7.83 billion—$390 million higher than in the previous year.1 (See Figure 1.) This is the third-highest budget since the record $8.26 billion spent in 2009–10.2 Despite some relatively minor fluctuations in the last seven years, peacekeeping budgets are much more stable now than in the 1990s, when a rapid rise in spending was followed by an abrupt decline.