Worldcrunch
The September 11 attacks both mobilized America and showed its fragility. Twenty years later, the United States is withdrawing from the Middle East. The greatest beneficiary is not the Muslim world, as Bin Laden dreamed, but two powers reborn in the East.
Welcome to Friday, where a “terrorist attack” in New Zealand leaves at least six dead, the New York flooding toll multiplies and an iconic Swedish 70s disco band is making a comeback. Italian daily La Stampa also looks at the unlikely rise in China of gray-haired influencers trending on social media.
Welcome to Thursday, where double vaccination is found to halve the chances of long COVID, a near-total abortion ban comes into effect in Texas and Brussels doctors know what’s good for you (it’s not sprouts). French daily Les Echos also *dives* deep to see if the miraculous powers of algae can save our lives and the planet.
Welcome to Wednesday, where Joe Biden defends his decision to pull out troops from Afghanistan, a new COVID variant of interest has emerged in South America and the Paralympics gets a dramatic late arrival. We also feature a Le Monde report from Jordan’s sputtering economy, where women are finally breaking into professions barred in the past by a “culture of shame.”
Billie Eilish and Demi Lovato represent a new kind of performance artist for our confessional times.
Welcome to Tuesday, where the final U.S. soldiers have left Afghanistan, a snap lockdown in New Zealand looks to be working and Nike employees get a “mental-health week.” We also visit the French capital to hear what local residents really think about the filming of the Netflix show Emily in Paris in their chic neighborhood.
The year is 2056. Decades of war have resulted in constant advances in weapon technology — including one such novelty dubbed the “hypervelocity missile.” Moving at six times the speed of sound, these weapons have changed the rules of combat. In order to protect themselves against attacks, armies have designed a sophisticated shield that can […]
In Mali and elsewhere in northern and western Africa, al-Qaeda factions have been held back with the help of the French military. Fears are rising of a future pullout after watching the debacle in Kabul.
Political philosophy sheds some light on the United States’ moral responsibility in Afghanistan
HIV health and support groups in LGBT neighborhoods offered COVID-19 testing and other community services during the pandemic.
Over the past 30 years, more than 170,000 Chinese-born children have been raised by U.S. families. Most of the parents are white and many live in areas where Asians are almost nonexistent.
The Taliban insurgents continue their deadly war to seize control of Afghanistan after the departure of United States and NATO forces. As they close in on major cities that were once government strongholds, like Badakhshan and Kandahar, many Afghans – and the world – fear a total takeover. Afghan women may have the most to fear from these Islamic militants. We are academics who interviewed 15 Afghan women activists, community leaders and politicians over the past year as part of an international effort to ensure that women’s human rights are defended and constitutionally protected in Afghanistan. For the safety of […]
Good-faith disagreements are a normal part of society and building strong relationships. Yet it’s difficult to engage in good-faith disagreements on the internet, and people reach less common ground online compared with face-to-face disagreements. There’s no shortage of research about the psychology of arguing online, from text versus voice to how anyone can become a troll and advice about how to argue well. But there’s another factor that’s often overlooked: the design of social media itself. My colleagues and I investigated how the design of social media affects online disagreements and how to design for constructive arguments. We surveyed and […]
Professors Christian Jakob and Michael Reeder explain how heatwaves form … and why they weather is a part of climate change we should pay closer attention to.
Since Agnès Varda, Louis Malle and Michel Gondry, trying one’s luck in Hollywood has become an obsession for some French filmmakers. But Netflix and friends are changing the formula.
With COVID-19 vaccines working and restrictions lifting across the country, it’s finally time for those now vaccinated who’ve been hunkered down at home to ditch the sweatpants and reemerge from their Netflix caves. But your brain may not be so eager to dive back into your former social life. Social distancing measures proved essential for slowing COVID-19’s spread worldwide – preventing upward of an estimated 500 million cases. But, while necessary, 15 months away from each other has taken a toll on people’s mental health. So how can people be so lonely yet so nervous about refilling their social calendars? […]
Chicken waffles, mac and cheese, cornbread… these iconic African American dishes aren’t just trending on Netflix — they’re also making a name for themselves in the capital of haute cuisine.
In Moscow daily Kommersant, a long and fiery response from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to the U.S. and European tactics during and after this month’s Putin-Biden summit.
Every time there is a major disease outbreak, one of the first questions scientists and the public ask is: “Where did this come from?” In order to predict and prevent future pandemics like COVID-19, researchers need to find the origin of the viruses that cause them. This is not a trivial task. The origin of HIV was not clear until 20 years after it spread around the world. Scientists still don’t know the origin of Ebola, even though it has caused periodic epidemics since the 1970s. As an expert in viral ecology, I am often asked how scientists trace the […]
With new targets, the United States is trying to impose more of the same binary thinking that set the Middle East on fire.
Known as Afrilachia, the African-American culture that spawned in the rural areas around West Virginia and Kentucky is finally seeing the light of day.
Joe Biden’s Geneva meeting with Vladimir Putin cannot avoid the Nord Stream 2 pipeline standoff. Kyiv will be watching every step.
An unavoidable topic for President Joe Biden’s first foreign trip is Germany’s support for the massive pipeline project that Washington believes makes Europe too dependent on Moscow.
Million-dollar jackpots, free food and … a cow? Governments around the world are getting creative to encourage COVID vaccination, particularly among the young and healthy, who have some of the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy. Not everyone, of course, can be convinced. Die-hard antivaxers who fear medical side effects (that have no scientific grounding) may […]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/vweNvRVPw_c expand=1] May 31 marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence in American history. On May 30, 1921, a young Black man named Dick Rowland was arrested for an alleged assault on a White woman in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The […]
To celebrate Bob’s 80th birthday, a sampling of his songs sung from every corner of the planet.
London is taking a hardline against Moscow since Trump’s departure left Putin increasingly isolated.
A nationwise tour of how the alternative reality continues to thrive in local chapters.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/lec-AslZYvo expand=1] A local murder case that set off a worldwide movement arrived this week at its verdict, after three weeks of witness and expert testimonies: A Minneapolis jury found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. A bystander’s video had captured Chauvin kneeling on […]
Rather than ratchet up spending on America’s already bloated military, the U.S. president should take a broader view of national security and help develop economies elsewhere.
A century ago, during the Spanish flu pandemic, Americans were eager let down their guard and get on with normal life. The consequences were enormous.
In our digital era, having a pretty face is more important than ever. We spend our workdays staring at ourselves on Zoom cameras, and our off-time watching TikTok and Instagram videos. Applying online face filters for slimming noses, tucking cheeks, perfecting skin is always an option. Of course, there are also more, well, permanent effects […]
Imagine yourself as the first naturalist to stand in a place where little recorded scientific knowledge exists, like Alfred Russel Wallace in the Malay Archipelago or Alexander von Humboldt in the Americas in the early 1800s. The notes you record will expand humanity’s scientific knowledge of the natural world, and the specimens of plants and animals you collect are destined to be used for centuries to describe past and present biodiversity and make new discoveries in biomedicine and beyond. Now, imagine if those specimens were never collected. That’s what it’s like if samples from the field are not archived. Natural […]
Some may find this story a little hard to gobble.
Technological progressions have always changed how we behave. But AI has much more far-reaching potential to change the very meaning of what it is to be a human.
Whether governments exercising control or protest movements needing a boost, upstart social media platforms matter in places like Russia, Poland and India.
Racial and ethnic minority communities that lack internet access have been left behind in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The average monthly cost of internet access, about US$70, can be out of reach for those who can barely afford groceries. Reporters and scholars have written about the effects of lack of internet access in rural areas in the U.S. and developing countries, but they have paid less attention to the harm of lack of internet access in racial and ethnic minority communities in major cities. We are researchers who study health disparities. We are concerned that even when […]
The new documentary “Framing Britney Spears’ explores how both tabloid and mainstream media outlets first framed the American megastar as a hypersexualized Lolita, then a bad role model and finally an unstable mother. The film, produced by The New York Times, explores how the news coverage may have led to Spears being placed under a […]
One month after the insurrection on Capitol Hill, here are the rebels of Wall Street, a place of power no less symbolic.
For many people, the lesson from the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 – and more broadly from the experience of the last four years – is that American democracy has become newly and dangerously fragile. That conclusion is overstated. In fact, American democracy has always been fragile. And it might be more precise to diagnose the United States as a fragile union rather than a fragile democracy. As President Joe Biden said in his inaugural address, national unity is “that most elusive of things.” Certainly, faith in American democracy has been battered over the last year. […]