Reading Time: 4 minutes Vladimir Putin has a well-earned reputation for saber-rattling that in the end amounts to nothing. But when the saber is the most destructive weapon known to humanity—nuclear weapons some seven times more powerful than those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—it is dangerous to be dismissive. When the Russian leader announced in a speech that the […]
News Brief
Posted inHealth
New studies implicate long COVID in type-1 diabetes and brain injury
Reading Time: 2 minutes We’re in a complicated season of the COVID-19 pandemic. While health officials struggle with messaging around prevention, and politicians are eager to call an end to the era, new data has been surging around the long term impacts of COVID-19. All year, we’ve been seeing reports about the uptick in type-1 diabetes among children who […]
Posted inHealthcare
Is the pandemic over? Depends who you listen to
Reading Time: 3 minutes “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. It’s…but the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.” […]
Posted inReligious News
The murder of Mahsa Amini: Is this what happens when religion rules?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Last week, Mahsa Amini died from an alleged “heart attack” while in police custody during a visit to Tehran, the capital of Iran. Her crime? Showing her hair. Amini’s murder has sparked mass protests and at least 17 deaths across Iran as well as global outrage in the days since. For Americans, it is all […]
Posted inReligion
Catholics outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland. Could this be the end of the United Kingdom?
Reading Time: 5 minutes The writing has been on the wall since Brexit. The United Kingdom, made of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, is now counting its days. A further nail was driven into the coffin today as statistics from the 2021 census were released showing that, for the first time ever, Catholics now outnumber Protestants in Northern […]
Posted inLaw
Adnan Syed released, as evidence of US procedural failings mounts
Reading Time: 3 minutes In 2014, Adnan Syed became an internet sensation through Serial, an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig and supported by This American Life. Koenig had learned of Syed’s case through Rabia Chaudry, a lawyer and friend of the Syed family, who was fighting his conviction in 2000 for the murder of ex-girlfriend Hae Min […]
Posted inWar and Peace
Putin escalates Ukraine conflict with mobilization of reserves, nuclear blackmail
Reading Time: 3 minutes In a highly-anticipated yet repeatedly delayed speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday morning (Sept 21) that the country is to embark on a large-scale mobilization of military reserves. This is in response to successive failures in the ongoing war in Ukraine, most recently resulting in a lightning-quick counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region that liberated […]
Posted inBiology
Life on Mars? Perseverance rover finds organic matter
Reading Time: 2 minutes Humans have been captivated by fictional images of Martian life since the 19th century. In 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, observed canali–channels, then mistranslated as canals–on the planet, unintentionally sparking a movement of Martian conspiracists enchanted by the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Since then, we’ve been inching closer and closer to finding the real […]
Posted inFree Expression
Banned Books Week: Fighting censorship and preserving free speech
Reading Time: 3 minutes With the number of book bans increasing at a rapid pace and becoming evermore divisive, the attention to Banned Books Week, which runs September 18-24, 2022, is more important than ever. The American Library Association’ (ALA)’s officials reported 729 challenges in 2021, making it the highest number of challenges tracked since the ALA Office of […]
Posted inWar and Peace
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan: The other Eurasian wars
Reading Time: 2 minutes In the past week, the terms “border clash” and “dispute” have been used to describe two conflict zones in Eurasia easily overshadowed by Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, and recent news of Ukraine’s robust counterattacks. But such terms obscure the greater import of these situations: first in Armenia, where Azerbaijan advanced over four miles after […]