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Riley Sparks

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An image of a person with a machete in Congo Basin's tropical forest.
Green

Gabon Says It's Time For Rich Polluters To Pay Up

The country's "Green Gabon" sustainable development policy has proven a success. The question now is: How can Gabon reap the financial rewards of its preservation efforts?

I'm in the Gabonese rainforest, just a few meters away from one of the last representatives of the great apes of Africa: the western mountain gorilla.

There are 35,000 of them living in Gabon. They dwell secluded in the depths of the forest, continuously retreating as humans advance, and as the climate changes. But here, in the vast, 155,000-hectare Loango Park, human activity remains minimal. It's as if time stands still.

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Photo of U.S. President Joe Biden during the North America's Building Trades Unions Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, USA.
eyes on the U.S.

World Rolls Eyes At “Nonno” Biden’s Reelection Run

After Joe Biden announced he's running for a second term as U.S. president this week, newspapers around the world began to brace for a rematch of two rather old men.

It was America's "worst-kept secret": U.S. President Joe Biden's announcement this week that he would seek re-election came as no surprise. Still, there was plenty to say around the world about the president officially joining the race for a second term.

Many commentators focused on the president’s (rising) age and (sinking) popularity, with some questioning the Democratic party’s decision to stick with “old, boring and moderate” Biden instead of a more progressive candidate.

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At 80, Biden is the country’s oldest-ever incumbent president, and if re-elected would be 86 by the end of his second term.

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Photo of a bus at the border between the U.S. and Canada
eyes on the U.S.

Eyes On U.S. — Democrats, Republicans And Canadians In Standoff Over Migrant Buses

Republicans and Democrats have been engaged in political ping-pong over migration, bussing migrants from red to blue states. Now the issue has reached Canada as the migrants are pushed ever further north.

Known for its natural beauty and luxury shopping, the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod has long been associated with the U.S. political elite. The Kennedys holidayed there and former U.S. president Barack Obama chose the island to host his lavish 60th birthday party.

September last year should have been quiet as peak season came to an end, seasonal shops shuttered, and part-time residents left their summer homes to return to their regular lives. But the island found itself at the center of a political storm around immigration. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who may run for the White House in 2024, bought airline tickets for 50 asylum seekers to fly there from Texas in protest against President Joe Biden’s policies on immigration.

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Since then, thousands of migrants have been bussed to Democrat-run northern cities from the Republican-run states of Texas, Arizona and Florida. Republican governors say blue states (Democrat) should share the responsibility of taking care of the increasing number of migrants crossing the border. Numbers of migrants had dropped, but the end of pandemic-related policies is expected to lead to an uptick in the numbers crossing over the border.

While DeSantis’ move was initially criticized by Democrats, some cities and states run by Democrats in the south have also started bussing migrants north.

But the latest news is that migrants’ journeys don’t stop there — now being moved even further north, bounced around like balls in a game of political ping-pong.

Political buck-passing

Authorities in New York City have begun shuttling them up to the Canadian border. And Quebec premier François Legault is demanding New York stop the buck-passing bus rides, which he says are straining the province’s asylum system.

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Photo of demonstrators in the UK against conversion therapy
LGBTQ Plus

Where Conversion Therapy Is Banned, And Where Its Practices Are Ever More Extreme

After almost five years of promises, the UK government says it will again introduce legislation to ban conversion therapy — and in a policy shift, the proposed law would include therapies designed for transgender people.

Conversion therapy, which includes a range of practices that aim to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity, has long been controversial. Many in the LGBTQ community consider it outright evil.

As the practice has spread, often pushed on young people by homophobic family members, there has been a worldwide push to make conversion therapy illegal, with the UK as the latest country set to ban such practices as electric shocks, aversion therapy and a variety of other traumatic, dangerous techniques to try to change someone's sexual preferences or gender identity.

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The British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, the professional body which governs therapists in the UK, calls the practice “unethical (and) potentially harmful.”

In France, journalists have documented many healthcare professionals offering the pseudoscientific practice. In one case, a self-described “LGBT-friendly” therapist offered to “cure” a young lesbian through so-called "rebirth therapy," a dangerous practice that was banned in some U.S. states after unlicensed therapists killed a 10-year-old girl during a session.

For one Canadian man, therapy included prescription medication and weekly ketamine injections to “correct the error” of his homosexuality, all under the guidance of a licensed psychiatrist. Some people are forced into treatment against their will — often minors — but most of the time, those who receive conversion therapy do so willingly.

The UK announcement of plans to ban conversion therapy for England and Wales comes after four separate British prime ministers had promised, for almost five years, to ban the practice.

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Photo of someone walking by houses in Toronto
Economy

Why More Countries Are Banning Foreigners From Buying Real Estate

Canada has become the most recent country to impose restrictions on non-residents buying real estate, arguing that wealthy investors from other countries are pricing out would-be local homeowners. But is singling out foreigners the best way to face a troubled housing market?

PARIS — It’s easy to forget that soon after the outbreak of COVID-19, many real estate experts were forecasting that housing prices could face a once-in-generation drop. The logic was that a shrinking pandemic economy would combine with people moving out of cities to push costs down in a lasting way.

Ultimately, in most places, the opposite has happened. Home prices in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand rose between 25% and 50% since the outbreak of COVID-19.

This explosion was driven by a number of factors, including low interest rates, supply chain issues in construction and shortages in available properties caused in part by investors buying up large swathes of housing stock.

Yet some see another culprit deserving of particular attention: foreign buyers.

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Archive photo of a police unit looking for hidden weapons in 1963 in a home in Corleone, the birthplace of one of the most powerful mafia clans.
Society

Weird Stuff, Guns & Money: Inside The Hideouts Of Mob Bosses And Fugitive Warlords

After the capture this week of Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, police revealed some notable contents of two of his hideouts after 30 years on the run. There's a long history of discovering the secret lairs and bunkers of the world's Most Wanted bad guys.

Expensive watches, perfumes, designer clothes and sex pills. A day after top Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro was captured after 30 years on the run, police revealed some of the possessions found in the Palermo apartment where he’d been hiding out under a false name.

By Wednesday, Italian daily La Stampa was reporting, police had found a second hideout near Messina Denaro's hometown in the Sicilian province of Trapani, with a secret vault hidden behind a closet, where jewelry, gold and other valuables were found.

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photo of a statue of King Leopold II in Antwerp, Belgium, vandalized during anti-colonial protests in 2020.
In The News

After Dutch Apology For Slavery, Why Is Belgium Balking On Its Colonial History?

On the same day that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte officially apologized for the Netherlands’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in neighboring Belgium, a parliamentary committee was unable to garner enough political support to apologize for decades of brutal colonization in central Africa.

Belgium and the Netherlands share a border, a language and a bustling trade relationship in the heart of Europe — they also share an ugly colonial legacy.

Yet while the Netherlands offered a landmark official apology this week for its ugly past, politicians in Belgium couldn't agree to do the same with its own colonial atrocities.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte officially apologized on Monday for the Netherlands’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, saying the country needed to do more to atone for its past. The country will set up a €200 million fund dedicated to raising awareness of the country’s past, as well as “addressing the present-day effects of slavery,” the Dutch government announced.

But on the same day in neighboring Belgium, a parliamentary committee folded after more than two years of work when members of parliament couldn’t agree on whether the country should apologize for decades of brutal colonization in central Africa.

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photo of Lukashenko greeting Putin, both smiling
In The News

Putin In Belarus: Is Lukashenko Ready To Enter The Ukraine War?

Five days after Minsk's troops began amassing at the Belarus-Ukraine border, Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived for an impromptu summit with Alexander Lukashenko. Belarus' strongman is increasingly seen as no longer having the option to say No to entering Putin's war against Ukraine.

This article has been updated on Dec. 19, 2022 at 4:40 p.m. CET with news developments

Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in Belarus on Monday, raising concerns that he had come to seal the country's leader Alexander Lukashenko's commitment to join the war against Ukraine.

International observers said the objective of Putin's visit — his first to the country since 2019 — is to push Belarus to send troops across the border into Ukraine, which he's so far avoided doing, despite allowing Russia to launch air and ground attacks from its territory.

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Ahead of his meeting with Putin, Lukashenko said that the country would decide for itself if it would go to war – but there were signs last week that he was preparing to help out. On Dec. 13, Belarusian troops began rapidly deploying to the Ukrainian border and the country’s defense ministry announced a “sudden inspection of combat readiness.”

The inspection finished just before Putin landed in Minsk on Monday, the Belarusian government said, as Russian media reported that troops stationed in Belarus had been ordered to start military exercises.

Over the past week, the Belaruski Gayun media has recorded increasing numbers of troops massing on the border with Ukraine.

Though such sudden exercises have occurred at other times since the beginning of the war, this time it comes amid an accumulation of signs that point to Lukashenko preparing to give final orders. Putin's visit Monday, which was announced less than 48 hours earlier, appears to confirm movement afoot.

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