3 Al Jazeera journalists were just sentenced in Egypt to long jail terms. Ready to go beyond the headlines? 5 primary sources worth reading next. Read: Al Jazeera explains Monday's verdict. Why you should read this: In a broadly condemned Egyptian trial this week, three Al Jazeera journalists were convicted -- after six months of detention -- ...

TED Fellow Bahia Shehab is an Egyptian artist who, at TEDGlobal 2012, shared her love of the Arabic phrase “No and a thousand times no,” boldly revealing that she had been stenciling the words on the streets of Cairo following the revolution of 2011, saying “no to military rule,” “no to burning books,” and “no to violence.” As protests were revi...

Dina El Wedidi is a traditional Egyptian singer -- but with a global twist. While her powerful chant draws from Egyptian folk songs, her lyrics speak to a generation of young Egyptians estranged from their government and looking for connection. Meanwhile, her band members play the guitar, the accordion and even the Irish violin. At TE...

Archaeology is a puzzle. For Sarah Parcak, trying to find ancient treasures is made exponentially easier by satellite imagery. Archaeologists have many tools at their disposal: shovels, trowels, satellites. If you are scratching your head at that final entry, check out how TED Prize winner Sarah Parcak uses satellite imagery to locate long-lost...

Strange as it may seem, archaeologists often look to the sky to discover sites buried deep beneath the earth. Space archaeology, as it’s called, refers to the use of high-resolution satellite imaging and lasers to map and model everything from hidden Mayan ruins in Central America to specific features on the ancient Silk Road trade route in ...

TED Prize winner Sarah Parcak has learned some key lessons about parenthood from her work as an archaeologist. At the same time, becoming a parent has given her new insights into what her work means. Parenthood is perhaps the most binary experience we go through -- there’s an "is not" and then there’s an "is." For a split moment during labor, y...

Sarah Parcak is a space archaeologist, and has located multiple lost ancient sites. Still, she says, it’s easy to pick her greatest discovery: her husband, Greg Mumford, who she met on her very first dig in Egypt. He was her first lesson in “finding unexpected wonderful things,” she says, and a second lesson followed quickly. On that same tr...

Egyptian filmmaker Jehane Noujaim won the TED Prize in 2006 with a wish to bring the world together for one day using the power of film. Her most recent work, The Square, saw her heading back to Cairo to track events in Tahrir Square as the Hosni Mubarak regime fell. While there, she filmed a group of local revolutionaries who had also been ...

Two years ago, waves of revolution swept through the Middle East. On February 17, 2011 -- two months after civil resistance began in Tunisia and less than a month after the people of Egypt rose up in Tahrir Square -- revolt began in Libya to oust dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Activist Zahra' Langhi was part of the "day of rage" that eventuall...

What powers the journey to a better future? Some really big wishes, and even bigger ideas. Our speakers in this session all have the tenacity, hope and relentless optimism necessary to believe that we can make progress in solving some of the most intractable problems of our time. Here are the speakers who appeared in this session. Click below...

She’s best described as the modern-day Indiana Jones. Using infrared imagery from satellites, she identifies ancient sites lost in time. In Egypt, she helped locate 17 potential pyramids, plus 1,000 potential forgotten tombs and 3,100 possible lost settlements. That’s in addition to her discoveries throughout the Roman Empire. Sarah Parca...

On November 17, 2012, in a village in Assuit-Egypt, a train crashed into a school bus killing 51 children. These kinds of accidents have always been brushed aside as random acts of chance. The minister of transportation resigned as a result, and the families of the children were compensated financially. There was a huge public outcry ... but...

This year has been marked by upheaval on a global scale -- and many of us are wondering: What will happen next? Satellite archaeologist and TED Prize winner Sarah Parcak shares three examples from the ancient past that offer lessons for today. 2016 has been a bruising year. We’ve had the highly contentious election in the US, the divisive Brexi...

However, many of these cameras were captured during violent clashes. Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim -- who won the TED Prize in 2006 and wished for a global day of film -- seeks to tell the story of these protestors in her new documentary, The Square. The film combines the shocking and powerful footage taken by the protestors themselves, along with...

In 2006, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim won a TED Prize with her wish to bring the world together for one day of film. Today during Session 4: Wish, she talks about her latest film, The Square. The Oscar-nominated documentary follows the lives of a group of protestors during the Egyptian Revolution. Their mantra: "We will no longer live in the story...

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'" —Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1866)...

Several members of the TED community appeared in the news this week. Below, some highlights: Yesterday marked the first-ever White House Maker Faire, which brought together 100 students, entrepreneurs, engineers and tinkerers from across the country. A 17-foot robotic giraffe attended, as did TED Fellows Jane Chen, David Lang, Manu Prakash ...

What’s the best way to find something lost on the ground, like a historical site from a civilization lost to time? For archaeologist Sarah Parcak, the answer’s obvious -- from way up above, using satellites, of course. As a space archaeologist, she’s mapped the lost city of Tanis (of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark fame) and identified th...

Saki Mafundikwa founded the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, ZIVA, a Bauhaus-style school focused on African heritage. (“Vigital” denotes visual arts taught using digital tools.) It's the first graphic design and new media college in the nation, and he wanted his students to understand the power of design--and in particular to understand ...

In this contested territory, women must endure a lengthy, frustrating process when they pursue a university education abroad. Here are four of their stories. “For me, two basic human rights are the right to education and the freedom of movement,” says Kuwaiti-raised Palestinian photojournalist Laura Boushnak (TED Talk: For these women, reading ...

Paleo-oncologist Katie Hunt has a personal connection to the hunt for cancer's earliest appearance in humans. When archeologist Katie Hunt was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 22, it catalyzed her curiosity about cancer -- and she soon found evidence that this modern killer is a surprisingly ancient disease. Poring over old texts and past arche...

Around 39 million people in the world are affected by blindness -- 80% of which could be avoided if people had timely access to diagnosis and proper treatment. The problem is that in many developing countries, most eye care providers are in cities, while the majority of patients live in hard-to-reach rural areas. To bridge this gap, London-bas...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Space archeology pioneer and Egyptologist Sarah Parcak zooms out from the moment 90 years ago when Howard Carter peered by candlelight into King Tut's tomb to a new age of archaeological discovery: seeking ancient civilization by 21st-century candlelight. Sarah uses satellite imagery to find evidence of ancien...

US authorities recovered an illegally looted mummy, and they wanted to return it. Big problem: They didn't know where it was from. Enter Sarah Parcak, an Egyptologist and expert in the relatively new field of space archaeology. Here, she explains how she and a team unravelled the mystery. Today there’s a new chapter in the history of collecting...

Among the winners of the 71st annual Peabody Awards: TED.com! The judges wrote: An outgrowth of a 1984 conference that brought together leaders in technology, entertainment and design (TED), the site makes creative thinkers and their ideas available everywhere, anytime. We're thrilled and honored to be among this company of Peabody awa...

TEDxYouthDay starts now! Today and tomorrow 100 TEDx events will participate in TEDxYouthDay, TEDx’s initiative to inspire curiosity, ignite new ideas, and empower leaders in the youth of today. Youth events will go on in 42 countries — including Egypt, Spain, India, Hong Kong, Brazil, Taiwan and the United State. You can also follow live upd...

Two weeks ago, hours after Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to “wipe out” Twitter, his government blocked access to the platform across the country. It was just weeks before a hotly contended election, and Erdoğan was upset about tweets accusing him of corruption. A judicial ruling in Turkey called for Twitter to take down the...

“What would happen if you wanted a bunch of people to come with you on a journey?” TED Curator Chris Anderson asked this to a crowd of 100+ TEDx organizers from 43 countries — including Sudan, South Africa, France, China and Egypt — during his talk at the TEDx Workshop on Sunday, June 9, at TEDGlobal 2013 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Anderson was ...

Walid Al-Saqaf developed alkasir, software to circumvent Internet censorship. In this interview, Walid tells us why he’s vowed never to succumb to authoritarian regimes. >>> Walid asks: Can Internet censorship of any particular content be justified under certain circumstances? Explain. Click here to respond on Facebook now! Or ...

Around 39 million people in the world are affected by blindness -- 80% of which could be avoided if people had timely access to diagnosis and proper treatment. The problem is that in many developing countries, most eye care providers are in cities, while the majority of patients live in hard-to-reach rural areas. To bridge this gap, London-b...