Speaking About What's New...

Paula Allen

Photographer/activist Paula Allen was featured in Photo District News (PDN) as a "photographer making a difference" for her work with V-Day, the organization founded by playwright Eve Ensler devoted to ending violence against women and girls, for documenting the victims of sexual assault in Congo. www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/featured-in-print/e3i96d4521eedf15d13145737d9f71655e6?pn=4
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Zainab Al-Suwaij

Good news from Iraq? Zainab Al-Suwaij travels to Basra every six weeks to work on three ongoing projects: Developing women's rights in the face of the Islamist movement; cultivating Ambassadors of Peace among tribal leaders, politicians and the young; and providing mental health services to 40,000 young people traumatized by the war. www.aicongress.org
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Tal Ben-Shahar

Post traumatic growth? The science of optimal love? Learn to fail or fail to learn? Watch the Big Think interview with positive psychology expert Tal Ben-Shahar: bigthink.com/talbenshahar/big-think-interview-with-tal-ben-shahar.
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Mark Matousek

Matousek is currently working on a new book, Ethical Wisdom: What Makes Us Good, about the emerging science of a global morality. The book is scheduled for release by Doubleday in 2009.
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Hedda Nussbaum

Hedda Nussbaum continues to offer her knowledge about domestic violence to corporations, where the effects of domestic abuse are staggering. A study of domestic violence survivors found that 74% of employed battered women were harassed by their partner while they were at work. The annual cost of lost productivity due to domestic violence is estimated as $727.8 million, with over 7.9 million paid workdays lost each year.
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Rory O'Connor

Rory O'Connor has just completed directing, producing, and writing a new documentary film, "The Battle of Durban II: Israel, Palestine & the United Nations". He is now in pre-production for another, working title, "The Obama Doctrine."

O'Connor has also begun work on a new book about the impact of social networking on journalism, entitled "The Feed Is My Friend," and continues regular Internet posting, both on his two blogs — Media Is A Plural and Shock Jocks — and on popular sites like The Huffington Post, AlterNet.org, and many others.
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Deborah Siegel

Deborah Siegel has become Vice President at Large at She Writes, a place where women writers get support and services for every stage of their writing lives. She'll be working closely with Founder/CEO and fellow author Kamy Wicoff to build out the Ning-based social networking site, which has gathered 6,000 members in its first 6 months.
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Jacquette Timmons

Jacquette Timmons' book Financial Intimacy was recently released by Chicago Review Press. In it, Timmons endeavors to turn money into the unlikely tool that brings couples together. Beverly Goodman, Senior Editor, Smart Money says Financial Intimacy "goes beyond telling couples how to manage their debt and invest for the future; it shows couples how to make those conversations routine and painless."
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James Traub

James Traub has been focusing on the Obama Administration's foreign policy. In addition to a recent profile of Vice President Joseph Biden in The New York Times Magazine, he has had a series of pieces in The Week in Review section on the subject, including one which examined the idea of "engagement." Traub is now working on a long piece on Obama's nonproliferation agenda.

Traub recently travelled to West Africa to write a piece on the growing threat to the unstable states there of the cocaine trade which runs from South America through West Africa to Europe — an example of "the globalization of bad things."

In the spring of 2010, Traub will be teaching a class on the development of American foreign policy from the time of Wilson to a group of Emirati students in Abu Dhabi, as part of the new university that NYU is creating there.
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Bill Wallauer

Videographer Bill Wallauer is headed to Uganda for another two months of filming for Disney Nature's chimpanzee film, scheduled for cinema release in 2012. The film is an in-depth window into the lives of wild chimpanzees. Wallauer believes it is a great opportunity to reach a much wider audience than the 4-5 million viewers who loyally follow natural history films on television. His hope is that it will increase interest in chimpanzees and raise concern for their survival. Read Wallauer's first blog installment for the project: www.janegoodall.org/blogs/clone-clone-chimpanzee-notes-field
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