One of the collateral damages of the climate emergency that we may not think about is how flavors will be altered. We will notice the tastes of wine and beer, coffee, cheese and even seafood are already beginning to change …
Month: December 2023
Updated Dec. 14, 2023 at 1 p.m. Arriving by ship, skis and dog-powered sleighs, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived where no human had ever set foot, exactly 111 years ago today. Why was Roald Amundsen trying to reach the South Pole? Amundsen’s initial plans had focused on the Arctic and the conquest of the North […]
In Bulgaria, Roma people are the second-largest minority group, but their community goes largely ignored by politicians as hatred and prejudice grows against them. Italy’s daily La Stampa visits Fakulteta, where 45,000 Roma people live, mostly segregated from the rest of the country.
Middle East attention is focused on the war in Gaza, which has given the Iranian regime a great opportunity to lock down control on the situation at home and try to break the protest movement of the past year with extreme violence.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s tough words for Benjamin Netanyahu cannot really be reconciled, and point to a paradox: Netanyahu may be the warlord whom the army obeys, but he is also a politician whom the vast majority of his fellow citizens would like to see leave.
Updated Dec. 13, 2023 at 12:10 p.m. It was exactly 20 years ago that Saddam Hussein was captured by the United States military in the town of Ad-Dawr, Iraq. Why was the U.S. at war with Iraq? In 2003, a coalition between the United States and British forces initiated war on Iraq to depose Saddam […]
So-called “convalescent regiments” have been formed within the Russian army in an apparently desperate, and inhumane, attempt to avoid a deepening shortage of troops.
Is Venezuela’s President Maduro renewing the country’s long-standing claim to a big part of neighboring Guyana to distract from his unpopularity at home, to postpone next year’s general elections, or to nab some of Guyana’s rocketing oil wealth?
The American superpower (and its European allies) are not seeing the results they’d hoped for Ukraine’s war against Russia, while the Middle East spirals out of control. Chinese leaders may see Washington as too vulnerable to challenge it in the South China Sea.
Palestinians are being terrorized by Israel’s attacks and constantly shifting evacuation orders. Meanwhile, no country in or out of the region has agreed to take in refugees, and Gazans may not even go, still haunted by the “Nakba,” the mass displacement of Palestinians after 1948. The rising death count is the clearest sign of a truly desperate situation.
Since the West has largely abandoned the fight against terror in the region, Russia’s hour seems to have come. Until now, the transit country for migration has wavered as to whether it should break with the EU and turn to Moscow. A new deal is now sending a clear signal.
Updated December 12, 2023 at 12:20 p.m. Often referred to as the Paris Climate Accords, the Paris Agreement is an international treaty aimed at forcing countries and companies to change their behavior to reverse climate change. It was signed on December 12, 2015 at the end of the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference near […]
In fatherhood, like in life in general, reality often surpasses our expectations, writes Argentine journalist Ignacio Pereyra. Whenever we have a feeling that we know what is going to happen, life proves us wrong — often for better.
Egypt is holding a presidential election during which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is certain to win another term. To protest a lack of genuine democracy, some opponents have chosen to boycott the whole process, others opted to invalidate their votes. It’s a loaded calculation.
For decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been left unresolved. Hamas’s recent attack has forced politicians to confront facts: the conflict needs a definitive solution. Yet the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank may make the two-state solution impossible to implement.
From Orban to Zelensky to Bolsonaro, the list of those who did and didn’t travel to Argentina says much about the new president, and the current state of the world.
If computing power becomes a major tool for superpowers like China and the U.S., then what does the latest U.S. technology blockade mean for the race to a more powerful AI? Honk Kong-based daily The Initium looks at the nuclear race of our time, with chips as the modern-day equivalent of enriched uranium.
Updated Dec. 11, 2023 at 12:10 p.m. After the death of his father, George V, on January 20, 1936, Edward VIII became the King of England at 42 years old, but shockingly announced his decision less than a year later to abdicate the throne on this day in history. Why did Edward VIII abdicate the […]
Tracing the early roots of the concept of the “Russian world” that sees the Russian state as eternal and impervious to change. Its primary objective is the establishment of a robust national state, a realm of expansionism where autocracy is the only form of governance possible.
The melting of the sea ice in the Far North has accelerated in recent years. The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard has become the focal point of the environmental drama gripping the Arctic as well as the geopolitical tensions it is causing there, with Russia in particular.
Updated Dec. 10, 2023 at 12:05 p.m. Considered one of the greatest singers in the history of American popular music and a seminal artist in soul music and rhythm and blues, Otis Redding, nicknamed the King of Soul, had a profound influence on other artists before his life was cut tragically short in a plane […]
In the Ukraine war, Russia’s military spending is as high as ever. Now the West is alarmed because the Kremlin leader is indirectly hinting at a possible attack on Latvia, a NATO member. It is a reminder of a growing danger to Europe.
Ending a pregnancy has become a major complication, and a crime, for Iranian women who cannot or will not have children in a country wracked by socio-economic woes and a leadership crisis.
Updated Dec. 9, 2023 at 12:20 It was on this day in 1987 that a series of Palestinian protests and violent uprisings began in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel in defiance of Israeli occupation. The confrontation would last for nearly six years. How did the first Intifada begin? An Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) truck […]
In the wake of Giulia Cecchettin’s death, our Naples-based Dottoré remembers one of her old patients, a victim of domestic abuse.
The author’s native country, India, is both a burgeoning world power and part of the Global South. And yet, its ambitious Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasn’t dared to say a single word against Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, even when countries in South America and Africa have severed their diplomatic relationships with Israel.
As COP28 heats up, a close-up look at the massive European earth observatory program 25 years after its creation, with its disturbing monthly reports of a planet that has gotten hotter than ever.
In Egypt and elsewhere in the region and the world, families and movements are mobilizing against companies that support Israel’s war on Gaza. The power of the people lies in their control as consumers — and the list of companies and brands to boycott grows longer.
The UN Secretary-General is raising the tone in the war in Gaza, but it comes at a time when international institutions are extremely weak. Looking back at history, that’s a dangerous thing.
Updated Dec. 8, 2023 at 12:15 p.m. A deranged fan shot and killed former Beatles member John Lennon outside of his apartment on the upper West Side of New York City on this day 43 years ago. Lennon’s death shocked the world, and seemed to put a definitive end to the 1960s and 1970s idealist […]
December 11 – December 17, 2023
Putting the latest AI breakthroughs at the service of national security raises major practical and ethical questions for the Pentagon.
A gigantic and multi-faceted new location near Shanghai epitomizes the American giant’s ambition to quench China’s growing but still-nascent thirst for coffee.
In the U.S., Republican senators called on to approve military aid to Kyiv are blackmailing the Biden administration on an unrelated matter. In Europe, French President Macron will be dining with the Hungarian Prime Minister, who has threatened to block aid to Ukraine as well.
Updated Dec. 7, 2023 at 12:15 p.m. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was a day that U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said “will live in infamy.” It would finally bring the United States into World War II, though with a decimated Pacific fleet from the Japanese surprise attack. Why Did Pearl Harbor Happen? The […]
With the end of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, the creator economy is the next frontier for organized labor.
In the West Bank, a quieter form of oppression has been plaguing Palestinians for a long time. Their olive groves are surrounded by soldiers, and it’s forbidden to harvest the olives – this economic and social violence has gotten far worse since Oct. 7.
Even with the war at a stalemate, and as far away as victory may be for both sides, negotiations are an absolute non-starter for both the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.
For the past month, Poland has been blocking off its border checkpoints to Ukrainian trucks, leaving many in days-long lines. It’s a commercial and economic showdown, but it’s about much more.