The buzz at Pivot25, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors held this June, is all about the future of money. Ben Lyon, the 24-year-old business-development VP of Kopo Kopo, wants $250,000 to produce his app for shops to process payments made by text message. Paul Okwalinga, 28, describes his money app — called M-Shop, it allows you to buy travel tickets and takeout via mobile phone — as "not reinventing the wheel but pimping it." Kamal Budhabhatti, 35, ...

Thomas Bausman, 2, and his brother Jake, 10 months, are typical American babies. Every day, Thomas settles down to watch two hours of television, while Jake sits in front of the set for an hour, the national average for their respective ages. Their favorite thing to watch, by far? Baby Einstein. Anita Bausman could not be more pleased with her children's preference. Jake, she reports, learned colors, numbers and his love of robots from the popular videos, which are filled ...

Can the U.N. play a proactive role in the economic crisis we are witnessing right now? Sekari Vaidy SUNNYVALE, CALIF. The goal of the U.N. is to promote harmonious development throughout the world. We welcome industrialized countries' stimulus packages, but at the same time they should never lose sight of the plight of billions of other people, the poorest of the poor. What can individuals do to halt the global climate crisis? Carl Sack, VANCOUVER Climate change is the defining ...

As most parents of small children will reluctantly admit, nothing can occupy a child quite like television. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence suggests that using the boob tube as a babysitter has its price: the more time babies spend sitting in front of the screen, the more their social, cognitive and language development may suffer. Recent studies show that TV-viewing tends to decrease babies' likelihood of learning new words, talking, playing and otherwise interacting with others. A new study ...

It was the day before the Bosnian elections, and in the northeastern city of Tuzla, the popular alternative band Dubioza Kolektiv was playing a get-out-the-vote concert to a packed audience. But even amid the excitement of the young crowd, Damir Dajanovic was not getting his hopes up. As long as the 21-year-old political activist could remember, his fragile country has been paralyzed by postwar ethnic divisions, corruption and a convoluted political system divided among Bosnian Muslims, Croats ...

On May 17, 1980, all hell broke loose in Liberty City, Fla. A Tampa jury acquitted four white policemen in the beating death of a black insurance agent, and the heart of Miami's black community burst into violence. Three days later, 18 people were dead, 1,100 arrested, and some $100 million in property destroyed. The riots left Liberty City among the least redeemable pieces of real estate in the nation. No private investor in his right mind would risk opening ...

Freya Van den Bossche is, by any defnition, a success. At 28, she is Belgium's Minister of Environment, Sustainable Development and Consumer Affairs — the youngest cabinet minister in the country's history, with a portfolio that includes food safety and protecting children online. She's smart, self-aware and, at almost any hour of the day, hard at work. So it's no surprise that she rolls her eyes at old-fashioned notions of sexism and government-mandated gender equality in politics and business. "If ...

In the midst of a steaming-hot Malaysian jungle, sweat-stained factory workers bend over their looms, threading copper into bales of cable wire that gets so hot, it must snake through culverts of water before it can be touched. The factory floor is awash in tea-colored light from windows smeared with soot. The grinding of machines creates a constant, earsplitting din. There is no air-conditioning. "It would cost too much," says Alvin Mui, president of P.I.E. Industrial, which operates the factory. ...

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. dollar has enjoyed a unique and powerful position in international trade. But perhaps no more. Before boarding a plane on Saturday to meet President George W. Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed, "Europe wants it. Europe demands it. Europe will get it." The "it" here is global financial reform, and evidently Sarkozy won't have to wait long. Just hours after their closed-door meeting had finished, Bush and Sarkozy, along ...

Noel Lee's career is as colorful as his many sports cars: he quit a job in nuclear research to play folk rock before deciding in 1979 to make quality speaker wire. The CEO of Monster Cable spoke with TIME's AMANDA BOWER about how he built a company on a product that stores used to give away, as well as the wireless revolution and the NFL. TIME Your business card says "The Head Monster." Do other CEOs take you seriously? LEE ...