At the top of the world, tradition runs strong.

The community of Savoonga, Alaska marked the beginning of the fall whaling season with traditional drumming on August 30. Savoonga, population 704, sits on the northern tip of St. Lawrence Island, a tiny speck of land that's closer to Russia than Alaska. St. Lawrence Island is one of the few remains of the Bering Land Bridge, according to the Alaska Dispatch.

Jason Patinkin is a freelance writer and photographer from Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from Columbia University in New York City, he taught middle school science for three years to some extremely brilliant young adults on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Jason is now based in Nairobi, Kenya where he believes he has found the world’s best cup of coffee.

NEW YORK — In a wild week of foreign policy here and all the posturing and the drama that comes with it amid the hype of a presidential campaign, there was at least one tangible action taken that deserves some time in the spotlight.

That is, President Obama's Executive Order to coordinate efforts in the government to work toward ending "the injustice, the outrage of human trafficking," or as he referred to it, "modern slavery."

Obama presented the idea in his speech at the Clinton Global Initiative, a call to action that was very much in the spirit of President Clinton's gathering of leaders in business, government and philanthropy to try to get them working together and inspiring each other to be change agents for the world's most intractable problems. Obama highlighted the estimated 20 million people who are trapped in prostitution rings, in lives as child soldiers or as indentured laborers in copper mines and on South China Sea's fishing boats.