When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

TOPIC: united states

This Happened

This Happened — October 2: Josephine Baker's Debut

Josephine Baker's debut in Paris on this day in 1925, was a pivotal moment in her career and played a significant role in her rise to international stardom.

Get This Happened straight to your inbox ✉️ each day! Sign up here.


Watch VideoShow less

This Happened — October 1: Las Vegas Shooting

The Las Vegas shooting, also known as the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting, occurred on this day in 2017, when a gunman opened fire on a crowd of concert goers from a hotel room in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Get This Happened straight to your inbox ✉️ each day! Sign up here.


Keep reading...Show less

This Happened — September 24: Barbara C Harris Becomes First Female Episcopal Bishop

On this day in 1988, Barbara C Harris of Mass became the first woman to be elected as an Episcopal bishop.

Get This Happened straight to your inbox ✉️ each day! Sign up here.

Keep reading...Show less

Muslim Call To Prayer, NYC-Style: A Turkish Eye On New York's Historic Azan Law

New York Mayor Eric Adams has for the first time allowed the city's mosques to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer over loudspeakers. A Turkish correspondent living in New York listens in to the sound of the call ("cleaner" than in Turkey), and the voices of local Muslims marking this watershed in their relationship with the city.

NEW YORK — It’s Sept. 1, nearing the time for the noon prayer for Muslim New Yorkers. The setting is the Masjid Al Aman, one of the city's biggest mosques, located at the border of the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. WABC, Channel 7, one of the local television stations, has a broadcast van parked at the corner. There are a few more camera people and journalists milling around. The tension is “not normal,” and residents of the neighborhood ask around what’s happening.

To receive Eyes on U.S. each week in your inbox, sign up here.

This neighborhood, extending from East New York to Ozone Park, is not the Brooklyn that you see in the movies, TV shows or novels. Remove the pizza parlors, dollar stores and the health clinics, and the rest is like the Republic of Muslim brothers and sisters. There are over 2,000 people from Bangladesh in East New York alone. There’s the largest halal supermarket of the neighborhood one block away from the mosque: Abdullah Supermarket. The most lively dining spot is the Brooklyn Halal Grill. Instead of a Kentucky Fried Chicken, there's a Medina Fried Chicken.

The congregation of the mosque, ABC 7, a clueless non-Muslim crowd and I are witnessing a first in New York history: The azan, the traditional Muslim public call to prayer, is being played at the outside of the mosque via speakers — without the need for special permission from the city. Yes, the azan is echoing in the streets of New York for the first time.

Keep reading...Show less
Ideas
Sandra Ward

Inside Ralston College, Jordan Peterson's Quiet New Weapon In The Culture Wars

The Canadian-born psychologist Jordan B. Peterson is one of the most prominent opponents of what's been termed: left-wing cancel culture and "wokism." As part of his mission , he serves as chancellor of Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, a picturesque setting for a unique experiment that contrasts with his image of provocateur par excellence.

This article was updated Sept. 21 at 5 p.m. with corrections*

SAVANNAH — Savannah is almost unbelievably beautiful. Fountains splash and babble in the well-tended front gardens of its town houses, which are straight out of Gone with the Wind. As you wander through its historic center, on sidewalks encrusted with oyster shells, past its countless parks, under the shadows cast by palm trees, magnolias and ancient oaks, it's as if you are walking back in time through centuries past.

Hidden behind two magnificent façades here is a sanctuary for people who want to travel even further back: to ancient Europe.

In this city of 147,000 in the U.S. state of Georgia, most locals have no idea what's inside this building. There is no sign – either on the wrought-iron gate to the front garden or on the entrance door – to suggest that this is the headquarters of a unique experiment. The motto of Ralston College, which was founded around a year ago, is "Free Speech is Life Itself."

The university's chancellor is one of the best-known figures in America’s culture wars: Jordan B. Peterson. Since 2016, the Canadian psychologist has made a name for himself with his sharp-worded attacks on feminism and gender politics, becoming public enemy No. 1 for those in the left-wing progressive camp.

Provocation and polemics, Peterson is a master of these arts, with a long list of controversies — and 4.6 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), and whose YouTube videos have been viewed by millions. Last year on Twitter he commented on a photo of a plus-size swimsuit model that she was "not beautiful," adding that "no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that."

A few years ago he sparked outrage with a tweet contesting the existence of "white privilege," the idea that all white people, whether they are aware of it or not, have unearned advantages. "There is nothing more racist," he said than this concept. He was even temporarily banned from the platform for an anti-trans tweet.

Watch VideoShow less
This Happened

This Happened — September 20:  Lunch Atop A Skyscraper

On this day in 1932, the famous photo was taken that captured construction workers having lunch while sitting on a steel beam 850 feet above the ground during the construction of the Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Get This Happened straight to your inbox ✉️ each day! Sign up here.

Watch VideoShow less
Migrant Lives
Adrià Salido

With The Migrants Forced To Face The Perils Of The Darién Gap Journey

The number of migrants and refugees who have passed through the Darien Gap reaches historic figures. So far this year, it is estimated that 250,000 migrants and refugees have crossed through the dangerous Darién jungle, mainly from countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Haiti.

NECOCLÍ — It is 7 in the morning at the Necoclí pier. Hundreds of migrants and refugees pack their goods in garbage bags. Then, they wait for their name to be called by the company that organizes the boats that will take them to Capurganá or Acandí.

Necoclí, a small Colombian fishing town on the Caribbean coast, has become the hub from where daily masses of people fleeing their countries set out for the Darién Gap — a tropical jungle route beset with wild animals and criminal gangs that connects Colombia to Panama. The journey to the UN camps in Panama can take up to seven days, depending on the conditions along the way.

In May this year, the US revoked Title 42, an emergency restriction imposed during the Trump administration. While on paper the order was meant to stop the spread of Covid-19, in practice it served to block the flow of migrants by allowing border officials to expel them without the opportunity to request asylum.

The termination of Title 42 has seen a dramatic increase in the number of migrants and refugees seeking the "American dream". According to the UN, more than 250,000 people have used the Darién Gap this year, over half of them Venezuelans.

Watch VideoShow less
This Happened

This Happened — September 11: The 9/11 Attacks Took Place

The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, happened on this day in 2001. They targeted the United States, with the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., being the primary targets.

Get This Happened straight to your inbox ✉️ each day! Sign up here.

Watch VideoShow less
Society
Valeria Berghinz

Roe v Wade To Mexican Supreme Court: What's Driving Abortion Rights Around The World

A landmark decision Wednesday by the Mexican Supreme Court is part of a push in Latin America to expand abortion access. But as seen by the U.S. overturning Roe v. Wade last year, the issue is moving in different directions around the world.

Updated on September 8, 2023

PARIS — It has been 14 months and 15 days since the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ruling that safe access to abortion is no longer a Constitutional right for American women.

For women in the rest of the world, the ruling reverberated on the weight of the U.S. judicial and cultural influence, with fears that it could have repercussions in their own courtrooms, parliaments and medical clinics.

Yet in what is perhaps the most momentous decision since Roe’s overturning, the U.S.’s southern neighbor, Mexico saw its own Supreme Court unanimously decree that abortion would be decriminalized nationwide, and inflicting any penalty on the medical procedure was “unconstitutional … and a violation of the human rights of women and those capable of being pregnant.”

Mexico is the latest (and most populous) Latin American country to expand reproductive rights, even as their northern neighbor continues to take steps backward on the issue.

Watch VideoShow less
Economy
Pravin Sawhney

Why India Should Bet On A BRICS Future (And Let G20 Pass On By)

With the G20 in New Delhi around the corner, India risks finding itself the wrong side of history, and end up as an observer and not one of the drivers of a "once in a lifetime" change.

-Analysis-

NEW DELHIIndia may believe it is in strategic competition with China over leadership of the Global South but the recent BRICS meet made it clear who is calling the shots. Watching from afar, the U.S.-led G7 nations could see that China was the key determinant of the summit’s accomplishments and that their own influence over the developing world had diminished substantially.

The biggest unsaid gain made by China was the deft shifting of its global geopolitical game – based on "common prosperity and cooperative security" — from east Asia to the 54-nation African continent. The attendance of some 35 African nations at the Johannesburg summit as South Africa’s invitees, followed by 50 African nations attending the third China-Africa Peace and Security forum in Beijing on Aug. 29 is testimony to the attraction President Xi Jinping’s "Global Development Initiative" (GDI) and "Global Security Initiative" (GSI) hold for the Global South.

The focus of the China-Africa Peace and Security forum was on peacekeeping (most of China’s 2,700+ peacekeepers are in Africa), counterterrorism, cyber security, humanitarian aid and military education.

Watch VideoShow less
This Happened

This Happened — September 4: Little Rock Nine

Elizabeth Eckord walked to her first day of school at Little Rock High on this day in 1957.

Get This Happened straight to your inbox ✉️ each day! Sign up here.


Watch VideoShow less
Society
Katarzyna Skiba

The Four-Day School Week, More New Experiments Around The World

As a new school year begins, educators from Poland to Australia to the U.S. are implementing four-day weeks, in a variety of ways. Will this be a short-lived fad, or the beginning of a new approach to education that can reduce stress for students, help recruit teachers and rethink learning altogether?

Beginning this year, students in Wodzisław Śląski, a city of 50,000 in southern Poland, will only have four days of traditional school classes per week. The reduced schedule — which comes along with fewer tests and new assessment criteria — were an initiative that came from the citizen grassroots level and ultimately was approved by municipal authorities, reports Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

The experimental four-day school week, for students in grades one through three, as well as certain older classes, will be instituted in all 13 public elementary schools within the city. Beginning in September, students will devote one day a week to carrying out non-traditional educational projects, such as going to science centers, learning craftsmanship, or taking walks through the local forests. The measure has been widened from a smaller pilot program tested last year, which included only a few of the city’s public schools.

Joanna Kulińska, principal of Primary School No. 2 in Wodzisław Śląski, explained that classes in select subjects will be combined into blocks, during which students can carry out a thematic project, go to a science center or take part in a non-traditional nature lesson. “This is a fantastic idea that allows us to transmit knowledge in an interesting and modern way – through experience and practice”, Kulińska added.

The new policy in Poland is part of an expanding interest in the four-day school week, with similar experiments in the United States, Australia, and France, with some instituting one full day of “non-traditional” learning, or simply an extra day off, as a means of reducing student stress and increasing engagement in class time. Some also see it as a way to reduce costs at a time of economic constraints.

Watch VideoShow less