Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: "We pause today to reflect on and celebrate democracy and the free and open debate it entails.

Imperial, California - You don't have to be a quick-witted youth to be a techie, says a California technology columnist.   "I would argue that most seniors are just as tech savvy as the 25 to 40-year olds who sleep with their smartphones, Instagram selfies and commune with hundreds of Facebook friends," according to David Einstein.

Washington, DC - Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued orders that will stop the further sale and distribution of four currently marketed R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company cigarette products – including its Camel Crush Bold brand – because the company’s submissions for these products did not meet requirements set forth in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act).

Washington, DC - USAID will host a town hall from 10 to 11 a.m. EDT on Thursday, September 17 to discuss its partnership with NASA to use space data to help international development efforts around the world. The event will be held in Washington in the amphitheater of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW.

Washington, DC - The analysis by NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder showed the annual minimum extent was 1.70 million square miles (4.41 million square kilometers) on September 11. This year’s minimum is 699,000 square miles (1.81 million square kilometers) lower than the 1981-2010 average.

Stanford, California - Natural resources are under increasing threat from both human development and climate change, and environmental economists have struggled to understand how the public assigns value to remaining pristine wilderness areas. In a recent study, environmental scientists and psychologists teamed up to explore how people make environmental decisions. To do so, the researchers used fMRI brain scanning.