Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron, despite being preoccupied with next spring’s presidential election, dropped in on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to celebrate the conclusion of a massive sale of French military equipment to Saudi Arabia’s neighbor and co-sponsor of the war...
There is no question about it: Our planet is warming faster than ever before. Having plateaued around 280 parts per million for thousands of years, global CO2 emissions have shot past 400 ppm at the end of the last decade, an atmospheric rise set in motion by the 18th-century Industrial...
At first, I was curious when I saw an article on Fair Observer by Ahmed Khalifa titled, “Austria’s COVID-19 Measures Have Gone Too Far.” After all, Austria is the country I currently live in, and my initial reaction to the announcement of another nationwide lockdown caused something of an...
Some 40 years ago, the Club of Rome published a study with what at the time was a relatively provocative title, “The Limits to Growth.” The book appeared at a time of rising environmental consciousness and growing uneasiness with respect to the state of the planet. Throughout the advanced...
Joshua Kimmich is among Germany’s most talented footballers. A key player with Bayern Munich as well as the German national team, he is an outspoken and vocal leader both on and off the pitch. Together with teammate Leon Goretzka, he founded WeKickCorona, a foundation that raises money to...
Thousands of people are waiting at the border between Belarus and Poland, hoping to enter the European Union. Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has flown them in from crisis areas like Iraq and Syria in retaliation for sanctions against his country. Top politicians in Berlin and Brussels are...
On Friday, news broke about a nationwide lockdown in Austria, which comes into effect on November 22. This was coupled with a government decision to make getting vaccinated against COVID-19 a legal requirement by February 2022. The result was a flood of demonstrators descending onto the streets of...
The concept of decolonizing the curriculum within British higher education returned to the spotlight this year with the Sewell Report on ethnic and racial disparities. While there are myriad problems and risks in downplaying institutional racism, the section of the report that criticizes...
Britain is in purgatory. Its latest racial crisis is as grave, urgent and compelling as the upheaval that followed the urban riots of the 1980s and the soul-searching over the report on the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1999. But the latest scandal that has engulfed one of Britain’s favorite...
In life, we generally believe that words matter and that they are important. We also think promises and pledges expressed in words and made in public are really important. They show our intentions and commitment to people who matter to us. And that actions speak louder than words. Fiji’s...
Switzerland is in the news again, and not in a positive sense. Quite the contrary: In no country in Western Europe are COVID-19 vaccine skeptics as vocal and militant as in the confederation. And for good reasons. In Switzerland, most major policy questions such as defense, immigration and...
