If the first meeting between the Biden administration and Chinese officials last week underscored anything, it’s that the US and China are unlikely to be friendly in the years to come. The two sides’ views of how the world should run are diametrically opposed — and competition more than cooperation will guide how Washington and…
Month: April 2022
A massive ship is stuck in the Suez Canal, disrupting trade and inspiring hilarious memes
A massive container ship stuck sideways in Egypt’s Suez Canal has been blocking one of the world’s busiest waterways for over 24 hours, disrupting global trade and launching a tidal wave of memes on social media. On Tuesday morning local time, the Ever Given, a 1,312-foot-long container ship capable of carrying more than 220,000 tons,…
Why North Korea is ramping up missile tests again
North Korea’s second missile test in a week is increasing the pressure on President Joe Biden to respond, inching the nuclear-armed state further up the administration’s long list of global challenges to address. Officials in the US, South Korea, and Japan announced that North Korea had launched two short-range ballistic missiles at around 7 am…
The Indigenous-led fight to stop the Line 3 oil pipeline expansion in Minnesota, explained
Tania Aubid began her hunger strike on Valentine’s Day. “Valentine’s Day is about love and having that love for your partner — but for me to have the love, I need to start from the ground up, which is Mother Earth,” Aubid told me. Her hunger strike is in protest of the Line 3 oil…
The generational grief of colonization
“In Guam, even the dead are dying,” Chamorro author and activist Julian Aguon writes in his new book The Properties of Perpetual Light. Aguon, a human rights lawyer and founder of Blue Ocean Law, has watched with anguish as his home island, along with the rest of the Marianas archipelago, has been environmentally degraded due…
The world’s biggest banks have pumped trillions into fossil fuel projects in the past 5 years
As the world careens toward a climate catastrophe, the biggest banks in the world are still financing fossil fuels in the trillions of dollars. That’s according to a recently released report by a cohort of environmental groups including the Rainforest Action Network and the Sierra Club, titled “Banking on Climate Chaos.” The report found that…
Biden’s stated rationale for extending America’s war in Afghanistan is weak
President Joe Biden all but said during his first formal press conference on Thursday that the United States would likely extend its 20-year military campaign in Afghanistan for at least a few more months beyond the May 1 withdrawal deadline set by the Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban. That’s his prerogative, of course. But…
Why Biden’s pledge of $4 billion to help vaccinate the world isn’t enough
The Biden administration has officially committed to Covax, the global effort to fund and deliver Covid-19 vaccines around the world, including to lower-income countries. The administration will commit $4 billion to Covax, releasing the first $2 billion immediately to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which is one of the partners in this effort along with the…
Facebook’s news ban in Australia is draconian. But it might not be wrong.
Facebook’s sudden move on Wednesday to cut Australians off from the news (and the rest of the world from Australian news) was as surprising as it was draconian. It blocked Australians from sharing any news links, Australian news publications from hosting their content on the platform, and the rest of us from sharing links to…
Myanmar’s pro-democracy protest movement is strengthening
Myanmar saw its largest nationwide protests since the military coup earlier this month, with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the streets and businesses shutting down across the country. Monday’s protests are the latest in a nearly month-long civil disobedience campaign that erupted in response to the February 1 takeover by Myanmar’s military that…