Five Best Ideas of the Day: April 17

1. Your mobile phone — working with everybody else’s — might give you a headstart to brace for an earthquake.

By Jessica Leber in Fast Co.Exist

2. This is the beginning of the end for oil, gas and coal. The world is adding more new renewable energy than fossil fuel power.

By Tom Randall in Bloomberg Business

3. What makes the California drought so special? Not that much. Dozens of states are running out of water.

By Elaine S. Povich at Pew Trusts

4. The future of war reporting might be data-sleuthing to see how Twitter took on ISIS.

By Rohan Jayasekera in Little Atoms

5. What if you could give change to the homeless from your smartphone?

By Eric M. Johnson at Reuters

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C.

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