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An aged Somalian man has made a 17-year-old his sixth wife after a huge wedding celebration with hundreds of guests.
Gunmen stormed a hotel in the Afghan capital this morning killing 12 people, including six UN staff.
Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians adequate access to water.
Today is the 47th anniversary of the day a courageous Soviet submarine officer, Vasili Arkhipov, probably saved the world from nuclear armageddon. On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile […]
“Obama’s War,” the smart Frontline episode about Afghanistan and Pakistan, includes a disquieting exchange between a U.S. Marine and two tribal elders in a remote Afghan village. Since this Global […]
Having blogged twice — here and here — about the September massacre by government forces in the west African nation of Guinea, I hope we’re all keeping an eye on […]
Drug-war dispatches out of Mexico, Pakistan’s seeming inability to control its tribal areas, and Jon Lee Anderson’s recent reporting on the largely lawless swaths of Rio de Janeiro lodged a […]
The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has failed to appear in court in The Hague charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Drivers in Dallas have been being illegally ticketed by police officers for not speaking English.
A school in China has outraged critics by teaching its pupils to salute every passing car on their way to school.
The big news about yesterday’s extraordinary 350.org call for climate action, staged in more than 180 countries, was not that activists rallied in scuba gear underwater at Australia’s Great Barrier […]
Are you a writer with a green cause? Then you probably shouldn’t bother applying for Columbia University’s 2-year Earth & Environmental Science Journalism Master’s Degree (EESJ) this winter. It doesn’t […]
I can’t blog forthrightly about the remote-control assassinations detailed this week in The New Yorker without first alerting readers to my bias — a bias that’s more about pragmatism and […]
An ice-skating bear in a touring Russian circus killed a circus manager and a trainer, raising concerns about the ethics and safety of using animals commercially.
The US has formally called for Roman Polanski’s extradition following four weeks in Swiss custody on child sex charges.
Biofuel development is going to add a lot more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than previously estimated, according to a new assessment published today in Science Express. In theory, fuel […]
What makes a woman appealing to a new male acquaintance? Imitation, according to this study, published in this month’s issue of the journal Social Influence. As described here,Nicolas Gueguen, a […]
Sara Nasserzadeh is no stranger to fielding complicated questions about sex. She hosted a radio program for BBC where she answered queries from callers in Afghanistan and Iran about the […]
What’s better than mimosas with brunch, walks in the park, dinner and a movie, day tripping out of town, reading a good book, and any other fabulous thing you could […]
Technological change captures attention in every era, exciting dreams (and nightmares) about the future, filling histories and literature with stories about its powerful effects. The newest and most impressive devices […]
Fittingly, it was my wife who pointed me to a great little story in the Washington Post about how some women in India are refusing to get married until the […]
Maybe it’s because I’ve been so baffled by Afghanistan or because I’m allergic to the hyperbolic use of “never” and “always” and “nothing.” Whatever the cause, I cringed when I […]
When Nigeria handed over a disputed peninsula to Cameroon last year, it looked a lot like a happy ending — a war averted and, in the words of the United […]
I’m bursting with things I want to share here today. But we’ve got a new look and new blog names, so I want to start by explaining what to expect […]
In a vindication of sorts for Stalin’s victims – as many as 20 million – a Moscow district court last week ruled against the dictator’s grandson, who sued a Russian […]
A burka is visible from 20,000 feet. So is an AK-47. That is not insignificant, as the debate rages on over whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. One alternative […]
Bottlenose dolphins have been caught on film playing soccer with jellyfish.