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Samantha Dooley

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Rickshaws in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Future

Population Control, The Environmental Fix No One Wants To Talk About

Climate change is a real and alarming problem. But there's another — and intimately related — ticking time bomb threatening our planet: overpopulation.

PARIS — More than 250 years ago — on Nov. 1, 1755 — a high-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami and fire ravaged the city of Lisbon, killing some 60,000 people. It also prompted a passionate, philosophical debate between two of Europe's leading thinkers of the time: Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

To Voltaire, the catastrophe represented the cruel hand of fate and the unfathomable decree of Providence — further evidence of just how miserable the human condition really is. Rousseau, on the other hand, saw urban expansion and population density as playing a key role in the death and destruction. It stemmed from an overall excess of civilization and separation from nature, he reasoned.

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Youths tend to stay in their parents’ homes for longer.
Switzerland

(Even Older) Boomerang Children Weigh On Parents' Well-Being

More and more young and not-so-young people are returning home to live with their parents. A phenomenon which is hard on their aging parents.

GENEVA — Françoise, 71, couldn't have dreamt of a more complicated relationship with her 39-year-old daughter Sandra. They used to speak every day, and not a week would pass without them seeing one another. But their relationship changed last September when Sandra arrived and unpacked her suitcases after a break-up. "She stayed seven months. Hell!" sighs Françoise. "She never ceased to remind me that I am old and decrepit and that she can't stand my retired life. Worse, she didn't do anything around the house, despite the fact that she acted very autonomously. I found myself stuck with a 40-year-old teenager."

Françoise says her grown daughter, who wanted a child of her own, had been stung badly by her boyfriend who changed his mind at the last minute. "She took her anger out on me," the aging mother said. "I didn't dare to invite friends over for lunch if she so much as seemed to be in a bad mood. I felt obliged to constantly be at her disposal."

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Technology has completely changed dating today
THE WASHINGTON POST

Boston To Hamburg, Finding The Romance In Our Tinder Age

-Essay-

PARIS This is not news, but dating today is a completely different animal than it was even five years ago, as new apps keep arriving to create "matches' between people online who may have never come face-to-face otherwise. Personally, online or off, the whole "dating" thing has never really been my strong suit — I was consistently told in high school that "I would do better in college where people were more mature." But alas, here I am, heading into my senior year at Boston University, the same age my parents were when they first got together, and I have never been on a proper date. But I'm not alone.

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Opioids And Unemployment: America's Real Recipe For Despair
eyes on the U.S.

Opioids And Unemployment: America's Real Recipe For Despair

The U.S. may boast the world's largest economy on one hand and a deeply problematic president on the other. But under the surface, things are bleak.

-OpEd-

There's something rotten in Trump's United States of America. No, I'm not talking about corruption cases, conflicts of interest or Russian inference, but rather the dashed hopes and declining quality of life for large sections of the population.

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Rolex watches on display in Basel, Switzerland
Switzerland

Rolex, Making Of A Worldwide Reputation From A Swiss Backyard

GENEVA — At a time when trust and truth are under attack, it's somehow comforting to see that some reputations can still go untarnished.

For the third year in a row, Swiss company Rolex has earned the designation as the company with the world's best reputation, as awarded by the Reputation Institute, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The timeless watchmakers beat out (in order) LEGO, Google, Canon and the Walt Disney Company to the top spot.

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Containing enthusiasm
eyes on the U.S.

Not Just Trump: More Economists Questioning Free-Trade Orthodoxy

For decades, economists scorned protectionism as a losing proposition. Now some have begun to admit that not everyone benefits from open markets.

PARIS — What if Donald Trump was right to close the borders? For quite a long time, the vast majority of economists would have scoffed at this very question. Come on, the advantages of free trade are obvious! Or so most economists agreed. And yet, there are more and more studies that paint a very different picture, studies showing that competition from China, for example, could cost France more than 100 jobs a day.

So why have economists trusted free trade for so long? Some would say it's ideological conviction, a faith in the supreme efficiency of the market. But there are many other, less ideologically driven proponents of open borders as well.

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When mixed with cannabis or alcohol, karkoubi can spark violent episodes that the user may not always remember.
Sources

Potent New 'Rambo' Drug Finds Fertile Ground In Casablanca

Young, poor Moroccans, desperate for a fleeting sense of power and control are turning to a nasty chemical cocktail called 'karkoubi.'

CASABLANCA —​Invincible. Fearless. That's how Hicham feels as he dangerously weaves a stolen motorcycle through the streets of Casablanca, a knife tucked in his pocket. The people he flys by are "as small as ants." It's like a video game, where consequences and danger are only virtual. As if to earn points and advance to the next level he slows to grab bags and phones as he goes.

Only now the game is over. "Open your eyes, you dirty scoundrel!" an officer shouts. At Hay Mohammadi police station, Hicham remembers nothing. The effects of the drugs have faded and the ants have turned back into people. He trembles, speaking too fast to be understood. A thick layer of saliva has formed around his pasty mouth.

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Students across the U.S. left class to take a stand against gun violence
Sources

Berkeley To Paris To Moscow, Eternal Ideals Of Youth

-Essay-

PARIS — Growing up in Northern California, acts of public protest were never far away. It felt perfectly natural for me to join fellow students in the annual "Day of Silence," refusing to say a word in any of my classes to draw attention to discrimination against the LGBTQ community. My favorite English teacher recounted his arrests while demonstrating as a student at UC Berkeley in the Sixties. And this week, following from afar on Facebook, I saw that my high school had notified students that they were free to leave class to participate in the nationwide walkout for 17 minutes to take a stand against gun violence.

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