The World This Week: A Global Round-Up of Managed Catastrophes By L. M. Valdez, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Atlantic It’s late spring in the northern hemisphere, which means conference season, summit season, and—if you squint—apology season. From Washington to Davos-by-Zoom, the planet’s most powerful have spent the past seven days issuing statements that read…
**The Muskonian Diaspora: How One Man’s Mid-Life Crisis Became a Geopolitical Weather System** *By Our Correspondent, still recovering from orbital whiplash* If you drew a Mercator projection of Elon Musk’s influence you’d end up with a Rorschach blot that looks suspiciously like a middle finger. From the lithium salt flats of Chile to the low-Earth…
**The Eternal Return of ‘Reform’: A Global Ritual of Hope and Disappointment** GENEVA—Here we go again. From the marble halls of Brussels to the smoke-filled backrooms of Beijing, humanity’s favorite political pastime has returned like a seasonal affliction: reform season. That magical time when politicians discover—shockingly—that their systems need fixing, just in time for the…
The Guardian: A Small Island Paper That Grew Up to Lecture the Planet By Our Correspondent in a Café with Suspiciously Fast Wi-Fi, Somewhere between Gatwick and Geopolitics LONDON—In most countries, a newspaper that still calls itself “The Manchester Guardian” on its masthead would be dismissed as regional nostalgia, the print equivalent of a pub…
**The Accidental Empress: How Kylie Kelce Became America’s Last Export Anyone Still Wants** *International Desk, somewhere between despair and the duty-free shop* While the rest of America busily exports inflation, culture wars, and increasingly questionable Netflix originals, one woman has managed to weaponize authenticity into the country’s last viable soft-power play. Enter Kylie Kelce—Philadelphia’s accidental…
Every September, while the planet politely burns and supply chains snap like cheap rosary beads, a quaint ritual unfurls across the Northern Hemisphere: Heritage Open Days. In England the National Trust swings open the gates of stately homes that smell of damp spaniel and inherited guilt; in France the Journées du Patrimoine invites citizens to…
The Telegraph: the 19th-Century Internet That Still Outruns Diplomacy By “Still-Alive” Sanchez, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere with Spotty Wi-Fi PARIS—On a rain-slick evening near Gare du Nord, a Belgian telecom engineer named Régine hooks a clackety brass key to a 160-year-old circuit and taps out “CQ CQ DE FN RÉGINE.” Within minutes an Italian ham in…
Susan Stamberg: The Velvet Voice Whose NPR Legacy Echoes Louder Than a Dictator’s Megaphone By Dave’s Locker Global Desk Listen closely on any given Tuesday in the souks of Marrakech, the karaoke bars of Seoul, or the all-night kafenios of Thessaloniki and you might still catch her: a soft, conspiratorial chuckle, a question that sounds…
GB News: Britain’s Gift to the Global Misinformation Economy By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Watching the World Burn in HD LONDON—In the beginning, there was the BBC: clipped vowels, stiff upper lips, and the faint smell of empire politely dying. Then came Sky, CNN International, Al Jazeera, and a parade of glossy pan-regional…
BBC News UK: The Empire’s Last Polite Broadcaster Tries to Stay Relevant While the World Burns by Our Correspondent in a Café with Suspiciously Imperial Décor, Somewhere East of Calais The planet tunes in each day—via shortwave, TikTok clip, or the backseat screen of a Delhi Uber—to watch a small island politely explain itself to…
The Duchess of Kent’s Quiet Rebellion: How a Royal Non-Entity Just Became the World’s Most Useful Monarch By the time you’ve finished your second espresso in whatever time zone you’re pretending to care about, Her Royal Highness Katharine, Duchess of Kent, has already done more for global soft diplomacy than most parliaments manage in a…
Sky News: A Small Island’s Loud Megaphone That the World Can’t Mute By Dave’s Locker International Desk LONDON—In the great bazaar of global news, Sky News is that stall run by the bloke who insists his artisanal hogwash is ethically sourced while simultaneously flogging you a half-price knock-off Rolex. Born in 1989 as Rupert Murdoch’s…
