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O GLOBO

O Globo is a nationwide Brazilian newspaper based in Rio de Janeiro. It was founded in 1925 and is one of the cornerstones of the media conglomerate Organizações Globo, led by businessman Roberto Marinho.
When The Russia-Ukraine War Began: A Look Back At 24 Newspaper Front Pages
FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Bertrand Hauger

When The Russia-Ukraine War Began: A Look Back At 24 Newspaper Front Pages

One year after the fateful decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin to launch a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, we take a look back at some of the front pages from the world's newspapers marking the the start of the war.

This article was updated February 24, 2023

"THIS IS WAR," read the front page ofGazeta Wyborcza. Alongside the terse, all-caps headline, the Polish daily featured a photo of Olena Kurilo, a teacher from Chuguev whose blood-covered face became one of the striking images of the beginning of the Ukraine invasion.

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A day after simultaneous attacks were launched from the south, east and north of the country, by land and by air, some press outlets chose to feature images of tanks, explosions, death and destruction that hit multiple cities across Ukraine, while others focused on the man behind the so-called "special military operation": Vladimir Putin.

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Zelensky In Washington: How It Played In Moscow, Kyiv And The Rest Of The World
In The News
Cameron Manley

Zelensky In Washington: How It Played In Moscow, Kyiv And The Rest Of The World

For the Russians, the Ukrainian president went to the U.S. “begging for money.” But elsewhere in the world, this visit was shaping up as one of the most significant episodes of a 10-month-old war with planetary implications.

-Analysis-

Ten months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky once again took the world by storm. His momentous visit to Washington was his first trip abroad since Russia’s full scale invasion, and signals a landmark moment in a war with so much at stake beyond Ukraine’s borders.

Zelensky addressed a joint session of Congress late Wednesday, stressing the need for more weapons and adding that “against all odds, and doom and gloom scenarios, Ukraine didn’t fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking.”

Earlier, U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed the Ukrainian president at the White House, where he confirmed a new $1.85 billion U.S. aid package to Ukraine, including the much discussed Patriot missile defense system. “We understand in our bones that Ukraine’s fight is part of something much bigger,” Biden said.

As dawn broke in Moscow, the reaction from Russian leaders was swift — and dripping with sarcasm and vitriol.

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photo of a woman on the phone in front of a storefront with a black friday advertisement
eyes on the U.S.
Alex Hurst

Eyes On U.S. — Thanksgiving Gone Global, Black Friday Bad Influence

PARIS — The city of lights is littered with advertisements for “Black Friday” deals. Of course, virtually none of the city’s residents will celebrate Thanksgiving — and few probably even know that the traditional Friday shopping day is linked to the uniquely American (always-on-Thursday) holiday.

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If you’ll allow me a small moment of personal commentary, as an American living abroad: There’s something sad about this all. Leaving aside all its dark historical context (which Germany’s Stern magazine explained last year to its readers), I’ve always found Thanksgiving to be a uniquely unifying holiday. It belongs to no specific religious tradition nor stirs nationalist fervor, with its defining characteristic just a whole lot of hearty eating, and reflecting on what you’re truly grateful for.

Leave it to U.S. consumer culture to tack-on to this idea of being thankful for what you have, a mad rush to buy what you haven’t yet got — and then in more recent years to export to the rest of the world just this consumeristic flipside of the coin. Black Friday has become in the past five years, the giant sales event that conquered all, from Greece to Guyane. (Although some are pushing back, like this French store that decided to make everything free on Friday.)

Nevertheless, even if Thanksgiving itself hasn’t gone global the way the day-after sales have, there’s still a healthy amount of interest as to juuuuust what those Americans are up to with their turkey and pumpkin pie…

German site Praxtipps explains how to celebrate Thanksgiving, making note of the breaking of the wishbone. Most of these align with the “6 Commandments of Thanksgiving” as Marie-Claire explains to its Francophone audience, meaning that the French and the Germans, at least, have understood the basics.

Moving south, Brazil’s O Globo asks, in a short, gif-illustrated listicle, “What if Thanksgiving were celebrated in Brazil?” and concludes that it would probably include an aunt asking uncomfortable questions about your new boyfriend (or potential lack thereof), and might even break into family drama. So, the Brazilians as well have grasped the basics!

I find myself a Homo Festivus, removed from history, living in a continual feast.

On the other side of the world, China’s Global Times decided to play the role of your contrarian uncle (or superpower rival) at the dinner table, judging that this year Americans have very little to be thankful for, and that the dinner itself is going to be far more expensive than last year, due to inflation.

To close it all off back in Paris, I can’t help but chuckle at a take only a far-right French magazine could have. Causeur asks, “can you be a good French person and celebrate Thanksgiving?” A question filled with existential dread, and a response filled with intellectual musings (“I find myself a Homo Festivus, removed from history, living in a continual feast”) and obligatory wine snobbery (“In fact, I feel the same kind of culpability that we, the French, often feel when drinking a foreign wine, worst of all a New World wine…”). The writer ultimately concludes that, yes, one can be a good French person and celebrate Thanksgiving because, after all, the values celebrated at Thanksgiving are situated, in a broad sense, in Western civilization itself.

Would that be Black Friday’s runaway consumerism, mon ami, or Thanksgiving’s original sin of colonialism? Oh nevermind: for today, I’ll just try to be thankful…

📰 FRONT PAGE: MBS Immunity


Like other global newspapers this week, Italian daily Corriere della Sera featured a front-page report on the U.S. decision to recognize diplomatic immunity for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “It was improbable that the United States, trading partner and ally of Saudi Arabia, would clear the way for the arrest of MBS,” writes Corriere’s U.S. correspondent Viviana Mazza. “But guaranteeing him immunity in this way sparked protests from human rights groups.”

🌈🔫 IN BRIEF: LGBTQ+ Gun Culture

Last week’s shooting at a gay bar in Colorado Springs, which left five dead, brought the country’s problematic gun culture back in the spotlight. Reporting from Texas for Spanish daily El Pais, Ferran Bono focuses on the rise of LGBTQ+ self-defense groups in America, that aim for an "inclusive and safe" use of weapons to protect LGBTQ+ events from far-right groups like the Proud Boys. The result: firearms and bulletproof vests among rainbow flags.

😅 SO AMERICAN: Wacky *Yankee Fans

The 2022 World Cup is under way, and virtually nobody outside the U.S. will be paying much attention to the American team’s performance on the pitch. Perdona. Instead, the team’s supporters in the stands are earning some serious applause, from Elvis to Wonder Woman and a very subtle full-body bald eagle.

Uvalde And The World: A Look As School Shootings Spread Beyond The U.S.
Society
Bertrand Hauger

Uvalde And The World: A Look As School Shootings Spread Beyond The U.S.

After a shooting left 21 dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, we take a look around the world at other countries that have faced similar shooting sprees on school grounds outside of the United States.

The killing Tuesday of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, adds to the United States’ long, sad list of mass shootings. It is the deadliest school attack in the country since the Dec. 2012, Sandy Hook shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead — and comes just 10 days after a gunman killed 10 at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

According to the independent organization Gun Violence Archive, 200 mass shootings have occurred so far this year in the U.S., with 27 school shootings resulting in deaths or injuries.

This, together with other statistics, paint a picture of school shootings as a uniquely American malady: a 2018 CNN report estimated that the U.S. had 57 times as many school shootings as the other G7 nations combined, with an average of one attack a week. And though the past two years have seen a drop in massacres on school grounds, as the pandemic forced the education world to move online, a recent Washington Post article notes that as classrooms reopen, gun violence is again soaring at the nation's primary and secondary schools.

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Photo of an empty theater with red seats
Coronavirus
Hannah Steinkopf-Frank

Carnival, Coachella, Beijing Games: COVID Threatening Live Events Again

The Omicron variant is again forcing event organizers to weigh whether to cancel, postpone or forge ahead in the face of superspreader risks.

Part of the shock in spring 2020 was seeing the COVID-19 pandemic bring virtually all major world events, from concerts to sporting competitions to holiday celebrations, to a screeching halt. Now, with the Delta and Omicron variants exploding around the world, the same hard reality will be facing event organizers in 2022 for a second or third year in a row, while the rest of us are left to ponder what it means to live in a world where we can’t come together en masse.

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Woman with a bright red shirt holding an Iphone
Society
Laure Gautherin

Quiet, Boss! How Portugal Became The World Model For Work-Life Balance

Portugal has become the first place in the world where it is illegal for managers to contact their employees after hours. Will other countries follow suit?

It's 8 p.m. after a long day of work, and you've clicked on your well-earned Netflix show...and "ping," another after-hours phone notification has arrived from your boss. Much of the working world has been there, somewhere between annoying and invasive. But now, in Portugal, it is also illegal.

Last Friday, the Portuguese Parliament approved a pioneering new law barring employers from contacting their staff outside their contracted working hours. The news, which has been hailed around the world by labor rights activists, academics and even television comedians, has largely been framed as a welcome response to the around-the-clock remote working that COVID-19 lockdowns have triggered.

Worker's rights

Still, the debate predates the pandemic, and the Portuguese party Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc) had first proposed a version of the law in 2017, having identified professional hyperconnectivity as a direct source of workers' fatigue and a negative weight on private and family life.

"Remote working has great advantages provided we control the disadvantages," said Mendes Godinho at Lisbon's Web Summit this month, reported Portuguese weekly Expressoearlier this month. "The pandemic accelerated the need to regulate what already needed to be regulated."

In the rest of the world, employees have the choice not to respond to their boss' messages or calls when they are off-the-clock, but that doesn't mean it doesn't create stress and anxiety. And with remote work becoming a daily reality for most of the population during lockdowns, the line between professional and private space and time got perniciously blurry, normalizing management's digital trespassing.

Question of wellbeing

The new law in Portugal adds to the employees' right to disconnect during their time off, the employer's duty to scrupulously respect working hours when contacting their collaborators, putting the emphasis on the employees' wellbeing.

To preserve the balance between work and life, the legislation presented by Portugal's labor minister, Ana Mendes Godinho, expressly forbids companies from contacting employees outside working hours, with a case of force majeure exception, reports Portuguese daily Correio da Manhã. Any employer failing to do so faces a fine of up to 9,600 euros. The law further protects employees' privacy by prohibiting companies from monitoring home workers in any way.

It gives workers an additional weapon

The law states that remote working must be established by mutual agreement between employer and employee, with hours and location specified in a contract. While workers can refuse to work at home without giving reasons, employers cannot, unless they justify in writing why. Remote work cannot be used as discriminatory grounds in terms of holidays, careers, health and insurance provisions. And as for parents of children up to eight years old, they have the right to work at home without asking for validation from an employer.

Also included in the new law is the duty for employers to financially compensate remote employees' work-related expenses, such as additional electricity or internet fees, and a mandatory in-person meeting between employees and their superior every two months to prevent isolation.

Young man holding a smartphone in a dark room

Overworked and weary-eyed

Adrian Swancar / Unsplash

How do you enforce it?

The law was welcomed worldwide with many calling on to their own respective governments to follow suit. It is "one of the world's boldest efforts to regulate the remote work that the pandemic forced on many in the industrialized world", wrote Raphael Minder in The New York Times.

Trevor Noah, host of the U.S. talk show The Daily Show, took a swipe at the weak protections for American workers. "A victory for workers in Portugal… Meanwhile, in America, a major labor victory is like, now Amazon workers get a choice of plastic or glass bottle to pee in," he quipped.

I don't know if it will work...

José Soeiro, a sociologist and a legislator for the Left Bloc, wrote in the newspaper Expresso, after the law was approved that Portugal can be a model for others. "That our law gives this signal, which seems unprecedented in international terms, is of great political and legal significance," he wrote."It also gives the workers an additional weapon to wield in the fight for the right to live beyond work."

Still, the legislation was also met with some skepticism. "It's a valid law, even more so with today's telecommuting system and with the phones never being switched off," an anonymous Brazilian working in Portugal told the Rio de Janeiro-based daily O Globo. "I just don't know if it will work."

It raises a crucial question on the mechanics of the new law: Would you be ready to report your boss to the authorities?

Photo of Fabiola da Silva, Brazilian pro inline skater, tying her ponytail
Society
Anne-Sophie Goninet, Rozena Crossman and Jane Herbelin

Meet The Trailblazing Female Athletes Competing With Men

Playing to defeat their male opponents — and gender division in sports.

Whenever a sports team composed of women plays a game, it is referred to as a "women's team." Their male counterparts, however, are simply considered a "team," with no explanatory adjective needed.

This argument has long been invoked when discussing women's secondary place in sports, and the battle is ongoing. Earlier this year, American soccer hero Meghan Rapinoe appeared in Congress to testify about the U.S. Soccer Federation's unequal pay between women's and men's teams.

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Back in February when the first vaccinations began in Serrana
Coronavirus
Alessio Perrone

As COVID Explodes In Brazil, Serrana Becomes World's First Fully Vaccinated City

As part of a medical study, the mid-sized Brazilian city of Serrana is now nearly 100% vaccinated, even as the rest of the country is crumbling under COVID's toll.

As Brazil lost another 3,462 of its citizens to COVID-19 on Wednesday, a little-known city of 45,000 in the center of the country had a very different story to tell: Welcome to Serrana, believed to be the world's first city to be immunized against COVID-19.

Facing a highly contagious variant and poor public management, Brazil is currently the country worst-hit by the pandemic, accounting this month for one of every four COVID-19 deaths and a overall death toll above 360,000. But this town's entire population has been vaccinated against COVID and walks mask-free; its health workers only treating a small number of lingering coronavirus cases.

Located some 300 kilometers north of São Paulo, Serrana has been distributing to all its residents since February two doses of Sinovac, a Coronavirus vaccine developed in China, as part of "Project S," a Brazilian study. Researchers hope the project will help settle pressing questions about COVID-19 vaccines, such as: Can someone who is vaccinated still transmit the virus? Does the vaccine work against variants? What exactly is the efficacy of China's vaccine, given that even Chinese authorities have recently recognized its shortcomings?

More than 97% of the population is vaccinated.

Serrana was chosen for the study because it used to be a hard-hit community, though that would be hard to tell now. Vaccinations ended on April 11, with researchers vaccinating 97.7% of the target population. Infection rates have plummeted. So has the number of people turning up at hospitals with respiratory problems. According to O Globo"s Valor Economico, it has been a week since anyone has been intubated.

The law still requires residents to wear masks and comply with social distancing, at least until the study's initial results are published, presumably in May. Yet impatience seems to spreading fast in Serrana, and many residents already act as if the pandemic is over. Estado de São Pauloreporters who visited the town saw several group gatherings and said many residents had ceased to wear masks.

Hope, too, seems contagious. Business owners who saw revenue drop by an average of 10% during the 2020 lockdown now appear relieved. They are joined by dozens of companies around Brazil who contacted local authorities hoping to set up a branch in Serrana. "The expectation is that businesses will be allowed to reopen this month, even if at 30% capacity," restaurant owner Ricardo Tadeu Lisi told Valor Economico. He said his revenues fell 70% in 2020, and he had to close down, renegotiate salaries and dismiss 14 employees — but now he hoped to reopen soon.

"It takes time to get back to normal, but we hope that 2021 will be a better year than 2020," he said. "There is a light at the end of the tunnel."