"Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, a member of the Belfer Center International Council, has reached a stage of distinction in life in which he feels no compunction about telling the truth as he sees it -- even uncomfortable truths."

Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, who spent the last year as a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, will join Thomson Reuters as senior vice president and head of government affairs for the Americas. She will remain affiliated with the Belfer Center as an adjunct senior fellow.

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements hosted a high-level roundtable at the Copenhagen Conference of the Parties (COP 15) in December, attended by key leaders in government, business, and environmental advocacy groups. The meeting gave negotiators and stakeholders an opportunity to explore the future direction of climate change policy and included a briefing on recent Harvard Project research.

Paula Dobrianskey is a senior fellow with Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She previously served as undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs for the Bush administration, and also was a senior vice president and head of the Washington office for the Council on Foreign Relations.

President Obama plans to introduce a nonproliferation resolution while chairing a session of the UN Security Council on September 24, with the aim of advancing the Administration's nonproliferation agenda. Though Iran and North Korea are not mentioned specifically in the resolution, they are likely to dominate leaders' discussions on the sidelines. In advance of the session, here is some "required reading" for each of the major issues at stake.

As global negotiators prepare to discuss the next international climate agreement in Copenhagen and beyond, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Climate Change Initiative has awarded the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements $600,000 over one year to significantly expand its research and policy outreach.

The current negotiations in Bonn, Germany, mark a major step on the road to the next international climate agreement. With the negotiating text now being discussed, the Harvard Project has a wide array of research papers and policy ideas, each condensed into a two-page summary, which may be useful to those working on these issues. We have chosen to highlight some of those most relevant to the Bonn negotiating agenda.

Venkatesh (Venky) Narayanamurti, is the new director of the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Public Policy program. He will be named the Benjamin Pierce Professor of Technology and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School in July.

With both China and the United States relying heavily on coal for electricity, senior government officials from both countries have urged immediate action to push forward technology that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired plants. They discussed possible actions at a high-level workshop in April jointly sponsored by the Belfer Center's Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research group, China's Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Global leaders are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Though Lawrence Summers, on leave from Harvard Kennedy School and the Belfer Center to serve as director of the National Economic Council, predicted that the sense of "freefall" may end in the next several months, a recovery is likely to still be some distance away. Belfer Center experts offer their thoughts on where the situation is headed, and what policymakers should do now.