Following the fall of Kabul in August, the first face-to-face meeting between US officials and the Taliban took place last week. As is typical in such first encounters, both sides came with their respective agendas, including demands and requests of the other side. The one issue on which both...
As demonstrations against sexual harassment and gender-based violence take center stage worldwide, Kuwait is witnessing a moment of its own. While Kuwaiti women have been fighting for their rights for decades, the latest movement was sparked after three women were murdered in just two weeks....
The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their...
The Republican Party is facing an existential crisis. Will their traditional base of small-government, low-tax party members endure, especially as they come under increasing attacks from, anti-immigrant, anti-science MAGA fundamentalists? Democrats face challenges of their own trying to figure...
Are we freighting football with too much responsibility? After all, the game we recognize today started as a frivolous competition for English factory workers to let off steam at the end of a miserable, emotionally unrewarding and ungratifying work week in the 19th century. Yet this futile ball...
It was supposed to be the greatest transition of modern times. Practically overnight, a dirty, inefficient and unjust system that encompassed 11 time zones was to undergo an extreme makeover. Billions of dollars were available to speed the process. A new crew of transition experts came up with the...
Jair Bolsonaro gave a speech at the UN General Assembly last month. It was full of the usual misstatements and exaggerations for which the Brazilian leader has become notorious. But the most noteworthy part of the speech had nothing to do with its contents. It was Bolsonaro’s refusal to take a...
HIV and COVID-19 have both laid bare that stark racial disparities exist in population health and in access to quality medical care in the United States.
Between September 17 and 19, Russians went to the polls to elect the State Duma. The voting period was officially increased to three days and introduced electronic voting for the first time due to measures intended to contain the spread of COVID-19 currently raging across the country. Third...
In December 2019, I wrote an article on Fair Observer titled, “Climate Change: One Step Forward, While Standing Still.” It was a cheeky piece, looking somewhat depressingly at the progress of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) meetings, otherwise known as the...
