Private companies and intelligence services have entered an unholy alliance: The former collect vast amounts of private data, the latter scoop it up without much oversight.

The current focus on policies for returning to economic growth threatens to obscure the problems of sustaining growth on a finite planet. A new study hopes to respond to this threat.

Economic and political shifts in large part attributable to the successes of the post-war multilateral order are now amongst the factors grinding that system into gridlock.

Film: Martin Rees speaks to TalkWorks on nuclear disarmament, threats confronting humanity in the 21st century and what must change as part of the 2013 Global Perspectives series.

Film: Paul Rogers speaks to TalkWorks on nuclear disarmament, threats confronting humanity in the 21st century and what must change as part of the 2013 Global Perspectives series. 

One of the most powerful international organisations is pitted against vulnerable people in the poorest country in the Americas. The accusation: that the UN is responsible for Haiti's cholera epidemic. What measures should now be taken? Who, if anyone, is to blame?

A new bill to reinstate the legal and democratic basis of the NHS in England has been laid before parliament in the House of Lords by David Owen. Here, to launch our new NHS section, Owen writes for openDemocracy on why it is both essential and urgently needed, to re-establish the principled public health service so valued by the English public.

In our new 'Eminent Europeans' series, we ask the continent's share of intellectuals - philosophers, artists or scientists - to share their vision of Europe. In the first article, Jan Truszczyński, the European Commission's Director-General for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, explains why the Erasmus programme is one of Europe's biggest achievements.

MOOCs (massive open online courses) and more freely available lectures and university content are transforming the education landscape, and alliances between academia and corporations are ever-increasing. But this revolution in education might pose a lethal threat for hardly commodifiable disciplines such as those of the humanities.