Updated Jan. 23, 2024 at 1:00 p.m.
Month: January 2024
President Vladimir Putin had transferred elite “Grom” troops after the fallout from last year’s Wagner Group mutiny to the south-central Russian republic of Bashkortostan, where there is dissent about preserving local language and culture.
Latin America’s socialist regimes are following the “Putin model” of policing the population, inspired by Soviet practices, but in the case of oil-rich Venezuela, fortunately, the communist science of repression is not yet watertight.
What has driven the rise and slow decline of Chinese social media influencers on the African continent? A mix of business, racism and censorship — and short attention spans of all of the above.
As Western sanctions have proven ineffective, Russian economy has been growing, along with defense and security expenditures. The world’s singular superpower in Washington has three cards it could pull to squeeze the invading country. Yet something is holding it back.
With Monday’s consecration of the controversial new Hindu temple, Ayodhya Ram, Indian Prime Minister Narenra Modi declared that God had “made him the representative of the people of India” to be present at the ceremony. This is a dark watershed in modern India’s attempt to reconcile church and state.
The rising tensions between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are about different visions of the geopolitics of the Middle East — but the stakes are also personal for each leader.
Updated Jan. 22, 2024 at 12:05 p.m. On this day in 1970, the Boeing 747, the world’s first “jumbo jet”, enters commercial service in on a Pan Am flight from New York to London. How much did the Boeing 747 cost? Pan Am head Juan Trippe sought an efficient way to place 400 passengers on […]
‘Thirst trap’ and ‘edgelord’ were recently added to the dictionary – so why hasn’t ‘nibling’ made the cut?
Many of history’s best-known painters and sculptors were thought to be gay or bisexual, but major Rembrandt and Michelangelo exhibitions have mostly remained silent on the subject. And yet the artists’ works are full of sexual symbols.
Putin has threatened Ukraine with a long war in the hope that Western support will wane and that his troops will eventually outnumber Ukraine’s. But his army has had a few difficult months and arms production can’t keep up. Meanwhile, Western support for Kyiv is holding steady.
Updated Jan. 21, 2024 at 12:15 p.m. It was 100 years ago on this day that Vladimir Lenin died at the age of 53. Who was Vladimir Lenin? Lenin was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He was the founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet […]
Organizing summits, placing flags, following schedules, dealing with the unexpected … The agents of France’s Quai d’Orsay who oversee the reception of foreign leaders and promote the country’s image don’t have an easy job.
The Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen are now using the conflict in Gaza as a justification for widening its reach. But the direct clash with the U.S. and others in the Red Sea may take a nine-year-long war to a whole other level.
Iran’s revolutionary regime is believed to have aided Russia against Ukraine and goaded Hamas into attacking Israel. Could its insidious backing for Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping finally end the West’s appeasement of a hooligan state.
For more than two decades, the Egyptian singer and dancer Ruby has pushed the conservative limits of society. Her latest song is more sexually explicit than ever.
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice attempts to turn longstanding international law on its head, writes Kai Ambos, a top expert on international law, for German daily Die Welt.
Updated Jan. 20, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. Barack Obama is inaugurated as 44th President of the United States on this date in 2009, making him the first African-American president. What did Barack Obama do before becoming president? After working as a writer and editor, Barack Obama became a community organizer in Chicago, lectured on constitutional […]
When the guns fall silent, Saudi Arabia and its ambitious prince want to be the historic peacemaker in the Middle East.
The leaders of key EU countries have been on the phone with Vladimir Putin since the war in Ukraine began. Weighing the costs, benefits…and morals…of leaving the door open to a man who brutally invaded a sovereign nation — and taking Munich 1938 as a starting point.
Omar Sharara, a journalist for the Cairo-based media Mada Masr reports on his exchanges with a Aden, a Palestinian photojournalist in Gaza, since the war began. Amid bombings and communications blackouts, Aden relays his family’s efforts to seek shelter.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide laws are still largely taboo, as Italy has been reminded recently. Still, lawmakers from New Zealand to Peru to Switzerland and beyond are gradually giving more space for people to choose to get help to end their lives — sometimes with new and innovative technological methods.
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Magazine #67 — ¡Emergencia! Ecuador
January 22 – January 28, 2024
Updated Jan. 19, 2024 at 11:50 a.m. On this day in 1997, Yasser Arafat returned to Hebron after 15 years mostly in Tunis. The Palestinian leader had also spent many years in exile in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere in the region. Who was Yasser Arafat? Arafat was a Palestinian political leader. In the latter part […]
With the World Economic Forum in Davos going on, French President Macron is launching with urgency the debate on a common defense for European countries, in light of Ukraine, the Middle East — and a possible return of Trump.
Chicken soup and vitamins are all fine and dandy, but there’s a world of uncommon ways to fight the common cold out there!
Following Russia and Ukraine’s prisoner exchange earlier this month, Vazhnyye Istorii/Important Stories shares the first-hand account of a Ukrainian prisoner of war, who spent nine months in captivity before she was released in February last year. Alla Senchenko, a sniper, recounts her harrowing nine months in captivity in Russian prisons and what helped her get through it.
Updated Jan. 18, 2024 at 12:40 p.m. The Paris Peace Conference, also known as the Versailles Peace Conference, opens to draw up the treaties formally ending World War I. It happened on this day in 1919. Why was the Versailles peace conference called? The conference was the formal meeting of the victorious Allies after the […]
Since Oct. 7, Israel has launched a crackdown on Palestinians, in both Gaza and the West Bank. Once the new detainees are taken to jail, they allege that authorities regularly take an extra hard line, including a disturbingly high number of prisoners killed.
As the situation escalates in the Middle East, the prospect of an all-out war may hinge on whether Iran will cross the Rubicon.
How daily life continues in this city in eastern Ukraine of 1.4 million, which has been shelled by Russia throughout the nearly two-year war.
Rationalism and technology are no longer tools in our hands but govern our lives, in a depressing world of our own making.
It goes far beyond Vladimir Putin: determinism, imperialism and other deeply ingrained ideas color the perceptions of many Russian citizens — even the would-be “liberal” sectors of society.
Updated Jan. 17, 2024 at 11:30 a.m. On this day in 1995, the Great Hanshin, or Kobe, earthquake rocked Japan. What happened during the Kobe earthquake? The Kobe earthquake struck at 5:46 a.m. in the Japanese coastal city of Kobe. It lasted about 20 seconds and registered as a magnitude 6.9 (7.3 on the Richter […]
In the Canadian Arctic, two ambitious research initiatives try to strengthen climate data through community engagement.
Our Naples-based psychiatrist laments the state of Italy’s treatment of autistic patients.
There is major maneuvering among the small but strategic islands in the South Pacific, with China offering security cooperation, and the United States reopening embassies and reviving dormant cooperation.
Ecuador’s simmering civil war, curiously, appears to also be a byproduct of the disbanding of Colombia’s FARC rebels in 2016. Since then, chaos has reigned through much of Latin American drug trafficking routes, reverberating with criminal elements in Ecuador.
Updated Jan. 16, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is sworn in as President of Liberia, making her the first African female head of state. It happened on this date in 2006. Who is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf? Ellen Johnson Sirleaf served as the 24th president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. She was the […]
Martin Luther King Jr. never directly addressed the Israel-Palestine conflict. But I think I know how he would feel today.